It’s Day 6 in the arctic, and the action in the Arctic Biosystems outpost is heating up. Balleseros survives being attacked in the “white room” by Daniel, Daniel gets a story, and a fleet of helicopters from Hataki’s mysterious employer descend on the base.
Balleseros, who had been left for dead out in the cold after recovering Dr. Hvit’s head and calling in for extraction, is dragged away and held hostage by a local law officer, Anana, played by Luciano Carro. Battlestar Galactica fans may remember Carro as Kat, Starbuck’s nemesis turned friend with a drug problem. Balleseros and Anana have nice chemistry together as she thwarts Balleseros’ attempts to escape being handcuffed to her couch. An interesting reveal comes in this scene, and that is that children have been disappearing for decades near Arctic Biosystems, and it appears Daniel is Anana’s long-lost kidnapped brother.
Aside from the helicopters cliffhanger ending, one of the strongest parts of this episode centered on Julia and her hallucinations of a young girl and of her home back in Montana. I don’t know if it was the goofy Nutcracker music at the dinner table, the dream element, or just the opportunity to see Julia in a different setting and interacting with Peter, who is still a bit of a mystery – even if he’s in a role of dream guide rather than Peter at this moment – but I enjoyed these scenes. Parts were predictable, such as the girl being revealed to be Julia as a child. But while I’m pretty certain I’ve seen a character in a dream being told to interact with characters in their dream to remember something a million times before on TV, I still enjoyed watching it.
On the personal front, boundaries were crossed as Alan and Sarah finally had you’re-in-the-arctic-trapped-with-black-goo-monsters sex. While I, and everyone else, saw this coming from the first episode, this relationship is creeping me out for a few reasons, the biggest one being that he’s her boss and there’s such an uneven balance of power. There are other factors as well – Sarah with her tumor is compromised, and when Alan finds out he has lost all moral superiority. And someone on this show has to have moral superiority. And then there’s the quad factor – a trend from TV shows from about a decade ago, and one I thought was fading out with good cause due to the fact that no one seems to enjoy them.
Other highlights included the introduction of another researcher with snark to replace the void left by Doreen, this one a cryogenics expert. Another was Alan sawing off the hand of an vector trying to push his way through the door to get at them. I swore I was watching The Walking Dead there for a moment. I suspected Alan and Sarah would be incompetent in breaking their way into Level R to rescue Julia, but I didn’t guess they’d never even make it past the door. Alan and Sarah's exploits eventually brought them to the lab where they recreated Doreen's exploding plant experiment to a Nutcracker score. Finally there were the rats doing what looked like underwater ballet in the cryogenics lab.
In the next episode, we will be visited by Ilaria COO Constance Sutton (Jeri Ryan), Hataki’s boss, who arrives on the helicopters. And please tell me what you thought of the episode in the comments. I'd love to hear it!
