Molly and Sam reteam as they plan to take down Sparks for what he did to his daughter and to Molly. Molly develops an overwhelming need to see the Space Baby, even to the exclusion of bringing down Sparks. John grows increasingly concerned about Ethan’s unexpected progress when he can suddenly speak Japanese. Yasumoto shares his illness with Sparks as Kern secretly teams up with Harmon and Molly to infiltrate the lab to steal the Space Baby. Meanwhile, Odin is not everything he seems to be and is using Julie to get to Ethan.
The Space Baby
They have randomly introduced the fact that they call the baby “The Offspring”. I suppose “Space Baby” doesn’t have the same ominously alien ring to it. Regardless, the Offspring continues to grow at an accelerated rate. However, when Molly is able to infiltrate the building in which the lab is located it is decided that it is best to move the Offspring to the contingency location to avoid detection and interference from the pernicious Molly. This is just the opportunity that Molly and her allies have been looking for, a chance to intercept the transfer of the baby. But when Sparks prepares to move the Offspring it generates a cloud of smoke that fills its chamber. They send someone in to investigate who only has time to make an exclamation of surprise before they lose communication. For a moment the Offspring’s vitals crash and then suddenly stabilize. What happened is that the now mobile Offspring detached itself from its umbilical and connected the lab tech in its place. The Offspring then turns the security team on each other, killing almost everyone in the room. The Offspring uses Sparks by appearing to him in the form of his daughter, who tells him that he needs to help the Offspring.
Old and New Alliances
Molly and Sam reunite as a team after the events of the previous episode. Sam looks into the Aruna crew’s medical records and finds that all their brain scans have been replaced with copies of one healthy brain scan. She also finds evidence that the Aruna was secretly a mining mission. Molly learns that Claypool Industries, a defunct mining company, bought a lavish apartment for Derek Pearce, the Aruna Mission Specialist, to keep him quiet about the conspiracy. When Molly arranges to meet with Pearce, she arrives to find that he has “jumped” from his apartment and is dead. John encourages Molly to drop her investigation, saying that the risks are too great, but Molly believes that the reward is worth the risk. Molly taunts Sparks with the video of his daughter’s final transmission, telling him he should beg for her forgiveness for what he did to her. Sparks runs to the lab to make the Offspring show Katie to him so he can apologize, but Molly follows him to the site. She infiltrates as far as the empty Claypool offices but then is trapped on the fifth floor while a security detail is organized. Kern arrives and unexpectedly saves Molly from being captured. He, Molly, and Harmon team up to intercept the transfer of the Offspring from the lab to the contingency site, but all goes horribly wrong when the Offspring escapes on its own.
Yasumoto
Yasumoto is understandably interested in the prospect of immortality and is pursuing multiple avenues of possibility in this respect. He reveals to Sparks that he is dying and that he is hoping that the Space Baby can either help produce the life giving substance that has been sustaining him – the one that he has failed to reproduce in the lab – or perhaps that its ability to bring the dead “back to life” can somehow benefit him. At the same time, Yasumoto is becoming increasingly interested in Ethan’s capabilities. Ethan’s accelerated learning and independence gives hope, in Yasumoto’s mind, that progress might be made in mapping and downloading a human brain into the body of a Humanic. John thinks this line of reasoning is not only premature but basically wrong. Yasumoto’s involvement in the Space Baby conspiracy remains unknown to Molly and her allies as Yasumoto pulls the strings from afar, allowing Sparks to be the face of his dirty work. Molly and Co. know, however, that someone is pulling Sparks’ strings and they only have to find out who it is.
Ethan
Ethan is mysteriously developing and learning at an unnatural pace, which frightens John. On Ethan’s first day back at school, John discovers that Ethan can speak Japanese. Ethan doesn’t even know how he learned it. John knows Ethan’s brain and didn’t install the capability for this kind of advanced learning. The purpose of Ethan is for him to be as human as possible, and that includes learning at a normal human rate. When Ethan appears to be transcending his own programming – growing beyond his limitations and basically rewriting his own programming – John worries that this makes Ethan less human and that his progress needs to be slowed. When John tries to implement these controls, he finds that Ethan has locked him out of his neural net, safeguarding himself from interference. While Ethan’s progress is extra-human, he begins to have normal human questions, like “What is my function?” and begins to desire more freedom to learn and explore.
Odin
It turns out that Odin is part of an anti-robot group and that he’s been using Julie to get close to Ethan. He apparently resents the wartime drones from taking his arm while their controllers did battle from an air-conditioned cubicle miles away. His group is small, but their intention seems malicious. Ethan is their target, whatever that might mean. Whether they intend to kill him or what is unclear, but whatever it is, it isn’t good. Femi Dodd, Yasumoto’s girlfriend and a member of his board of directors, is secretly a member of this anti-robot group. This explains a lot about her objections to John Humanic project. When John calls Julie to watch Ethan while he goes to help Molly, Julie brings Odin with her, leaving him with the perfect opportunity to enact his plan.
Overview
Well, I called it on Odin. It was pretty clear from the beginning that there was something suspicious about him. And its unfortunate, because Julie – who seems basically closed off from a lot of people – finds herself opening up to him only to find herself betrayed. And while the show is moving along at a surprisingly swift pace, it has a knack for answering questions that merely brings up new and unexpected questions. Moves like suddenly inserting this anti-robot group and the fact that Femi Dodd has been a member this whole time is pretty par for the course it seems. And this opens up other questions, like what is Femi’s real relationship with Yasumoto? Is she just using him or is there a real connection there? And does Yasumoto know about her extra-curricular activities? Maybe the whole group is secretly supported by Yasumoto for his own reasons and Femi is merely another puppet, like Sparks. And now that Sparks is in the control of the Space Baby, will he also find himself in league with the unlikely trio of Kern, Molly, and Harmon?
