This episode is a batch of little plots that are all kicked off by the Saratoga getting mail. All of the cast get something to do. I’ll cover the least interesting characters first: West’s plot here actually does follow up on his brother’s death last time, as he tries to make sure his parents are notified by something other than a form letter. Vansen’s sister has a baby and uses the name that Vansen always wanted to use for a child, and also she’s promoted to captain while distracted by that affront on her name-choosing. They deal with that stuff.

Meanwhile, Damphousse’s fiance breaks up with her (in a letter that answers a question I had last time, the Wild Cards have been out to war for a year now). Things get worse for her when she is blinded while on a mission (her psychic powers sure haven’t helped her lately). In the end, she gets better and meets a doctor who I assumed would be her new love interest, but he’s credited as “Ophthalmologist” so I would guess that guy ain’t coming back. Incidentally, West gets no bad news in the mail, so he spends the episode helping Damphousse and trying to get new boots.

Finally, McQueen and Hawkes, being In-Vitros with no family back on Earth, are not used to getting mail, but this time they do. They are notified that, in an attempt to reduce prejudice against In-Vitros, they will be starring in a propaganda piece about how they’re such good soldiers serving in the military. The documentary is made by an annoying guy (played by the Kenny Bania guy) who tries to get unrealistic shots and what. Hawkes at first tries to play like things are all good, no prejudice here, then snaps and attacks a soldier who has been slinging slurs at him all episode. Meanwhile McQueen tells a story about how a bunch of his fellow In-Vitros burned to death and he got in trouble for trying to help them. Still, we see the propaganda piece at the end and it ignores all that to say there’s no prejudice in the Marine Corps. Good old denial and lying.

I can’t lie, this one didn’t do much for me. It’s like this: West’s little brother has signed up for the war, and when he gets stationed to the Saratoga it stresses West out. Little brother is in a unit commanded by a foolish guy who wants to rush into battle to prove himself. So West spends the episode worried and little brother’s unit gets ambushed and, yeah, little brother ends up dead because war is bad. Pretty basic stuff. I’m not gonna say it was actively bad, but I was bored, so it sure wasn’t good. I hope, if nothing else, it actively colours West’s motivations going forth.

I don’t know how much time is meant to have passed since the war began, but when the “new meat” recruits arrive on the ship, the Wild Cards talk about how young they look, even though we’re in the first season. They’re acknowledging how the combat has mentally aged them, even thought they all look like young models.

This episode contains the line of dialogue “For this mission, the fourth planet from Achilles will be designated ‘Gooch'” and it is therefore the most important episode so far.

This one picks up from where the last one left us, so the existence of an alien enemy ace wasn’t a new status quo, it was a To Be Continued waiting to be resolved, and so it is resolved here. With Chiggy von Richthofen taking out human fighters at an alarming rate, the humans know they need to find a way to stop it before the Chigs create a bunch more ships like that. To that end they have some fancy alien space element with which they can make a single torpedo that should be able to take it out. They need a pilot who can get in there and do one cool hit and really mess up the alien ace. You know who wants to be that pilot? Commander McQueen (I have no idea if Commander is his actual rank, but he commands the Wild Cards, so he is deemed thus by me). Can he be the one to take the ol’ baddie down?

Incidentally, one of those extras who has been hanging around gets to play a prominent role in this one. Her name is Winslow and I checked IMDB to be sure, she was in other episodes even if I never picked her out of the crowd (though now that I realize she played the live-action version of Bernice in that one episode of Duckman, I wonder how I missed her). Winslow, a member of the Wild Cards even if she’s not one of the main cast, attempts to hit on McQueen, her commanding officer. He does not react well to this impropriety. But when she comes by later to apologize, he opens up to her and explains he has a failed relationship with a woman back on Earth and now he is seeking a purpose in life and has put himself fully into the military. With this alien ace out there massacring his allies, he’s just wondering what the point of it all is.

The thing is, McQueen doesn’t get the assignment to be the pilot who shoots the super-weapon. Some other guy does and that guy is killed, the super-weapon destroyed wastefully, and in the same mission Winslow is killed. That was pretty cool to me. If the show had decided to accept that, I would have been impressed. But the show continues and McQueen then disobeys orders and goes out on his own, with no backup and no special torpedo. He fights Chiggy von Richthofen and wins, because McQueen has main character powers. That part of the episode I find dumb.

In previous episodes I found McQueen to be very likeable. Perhaps I was blinded by the fact that he is very handsome, but he always seemed like a sensible sort. In this one he gets obsessed with having to be the one to save the day, and even resorts to torturing a Silicate saboteur for information on where the enemy ace is. One way to make me lose faith in a character is to have them torture a prisoner for information. And in the end, the show decides that everything McQueen did was worth it, because he legitimately was the only one who could bring down this baddie. The episode ends with McQueen disheartened, still wondering what the point of it all was, but the narrative isn’t so worried about it. The narrative says it was all good.

I mentioned last time how I thought there ought to be more space plane fighting, and this time it’s all about space plane fighting. This one is about the Chigs having a single fighter pilot who is an ace (they even nickname him Chiggy von Richthofen) who just keeps shooting down the human planes. Seriously, most of the episode is just that one Chig shooting down a bunch of humans and the humans being like “Well, we gotta do something about that.” Even when they finally send in the main characters, the ace is able to force them to retreat. That’s pretty much a definitive win against main characters. And the episode ends with this threat still out there.

Chiggy von Richthofen is obviously quite skilled, but also has a unique fighter, more armoured than other Chig craft and unable to be picked up on sensors or whatever. If any explanation is offered for why the Chigs don’t just build more craft like this, I sure didn’t see it. Oh, and the craft actually has “Abandon All Hope” in English painted on there. This really makes it clear that this Chig knows stuff about humans and has a personality and all that. I approve of anything that makes these aliens a bit more individualistic and even though we never see Chiggy von Richthofen, only exterior shots of the ship, this episode does that. Unless the next episode reveals there is a Silicate or human in there. But I am assuming that ain’t gonna happen.

Also, Vensen had an ex-boyfriend on one of the squads that got ruined and she’s all sad about it.