Bess and Morgan are the important players in this one, and they’re on the sympathetic side again, showing no outright villainous traits. Bess gets along with Devon and Morgan is tolerated by the men of the group. In times like these I can see how they’re redeemable.
This plot begins when Bess realizes she’s had thoughts of cheating on Morgan with another man (Unless I missed something, we’re not told who he was, but we know he’s with the group). She has not actually cheated on Morgan, but the the fact she considered it is enough to send her into a guilt spiral. First she goes to Yale, who has the details of all 99 popular religions in his computer head. Bess apparently is loyal to Catholicism and, even though Yale makes it clear he’s not a priest, he just has the notes on file, she confesses her supposed faithlessness to him. Then she tries to confess to Morgan himself, but he reacts about how one would expect from the character so far: badly. He makes a scene and escalates it to a fight.
Alonso then points out that the couple had a four-year marriage contract and such contracts are based on station time for the stations back around Earth. Since they’ve all spent two decades in suspended animation for the trip to G889, those contracts have all lapsed long ago. Bess and Morgan aren’t even technically married anymore, so now there’s nothing to hold them together unless they feel like they should stay together. This leads to introspection and Bess comes to think that maybe the relationship was a mistake all along. After all, she was a poor Earth girl and he is a politician from the stations, so he always considered her family to be much lower class. This leads to a scene in which Morgan does what he often does, retreats into VR, and Bess happens to stumble upon him while he can’t see. She realizes that he has created a VR representation of her father and he is trying to apologize and explain to him. Seeing him make this effort makes her fall for him again and they have Yale marry them again (this time for life) in as big a ceremony as they can manage. I still don’t get what she sees in him, but at least this time their vows didn’t include forsaking everyone else. That’s got to be good, right?
That’s not the only plot of the episode though. Also, Dr. Julia is still reporting to the Council and Uly is starting to get Terrian go-through-dirt powers. The Council wants her to harvest Uly’s pineal gland to study how the Terrians have changed him (they fear that when the rest of the settlers arrive, the sick kids among them will also gain powers and they want to study Uly to make sure they can control the situation). Julia stresses about how far to go with this for the Council, but ultimately lies to them because she isn’t willing to sacrifice the kid.
Other stuff: 1) That eagle sound effect. I was going to stop mentioning it, but then it happened like three times in as many minutes (probably not literally) just to mock me. Still, I probably won’t mention it any more unless it’s really necessary. Also, True didn’t scream in this one. 2) We get some world building about the history of Earth. Apparently, near the end of the 21st Century there was something called the Faith Wars, in which I guess religious groups fought. I feel like the real world future is still on track for that one. 3) After the wedding there’s a VR dance reception thing and I just bet the actors loved the chance to wear different clothes and be in a different set and such.
