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.

Well, this is definitely the horniest episode yet, I can tell you that for sure. I’ve probably missed things in earlier episodes that were meant to show that characters were pining for one another, because I don’t pay too much attention to that sort of thing, but this episode has Devon and Danziger tied up and Devon has to drink water from the canteen he has in his lap which could not have been presented in a more blowjobular fashion than it is here. Ergo, even I picked up on it this time.

Anyway, we definitely are picking up on the story after the last episode, so the order I am watching them in now seems correct. That’s proven because the reveal that Julia is reporting to someone, which was the stinger at the end last time, is immediately followed up on this time. She reports for the Council, who ran things back on the space stations back around Earth and famously have tried to kill the Eden Project people on more than one occasion. But the guy that Julia is reporting to says that all that stuff was because of a guy named Blaylock. He was the bad one. The rest of the Council are cool, he insists. Julia ain’t having it. She’s cuts off communication with the Council.

Julia’s other plot in this episode takes her into the horny side of things. She manages to finally get Alonso healed up so he can walk again, and he responds by making out with her. She’s not totally not into it, but it makes her feel weird and conflicted. Ultimately, I guess she remembers that Alonso has been one of the least interesting parts of the show because she cuts off their budding relationship and winds up reporting to the Council again instead.

The A-plot of the episode, though, is that the group is running low on water. When they detect a lake nearby, Devon and Danziger head out alone to get some of that good, good h2o. On the way, they have a tension about how he thinks she’s a spoiled rich girl who is out of his league and she tries to convince him that she’s been through stuff too and whatnot. I now see who the will-they-won’t-they pairing on the show is. Their romantic getaway is interrupted by Terrians though! The local spooky beings attack the humans and steal their vehicle. But Devon and Danziger continue to walk all the way to the lake only to find it is so acidic that it eats through a canteen in seconds. At one point Danziger is so badly wounded and dehydrated that Devon has to go off on her own and show us that she’s learned from him and is tough in her own way. But in any case, it turns out the Terrians ain’t so bad, they return the truck and show Devon where they can find water, and also heal up Danziger. Everybody wins and now we want those two single parents to bone.

What else was there? Let’s see… 1) Bess is downright genial in this one after the heel turn last episode. Maybe it’s just that she’s not interacting with Devon, but she’s upbeat even in the narrating, which she does without actually being important to the plot. 2) Morgan is also pretty decent in this episode. For Morgan anyway. At one point Bess thinks that he stole extra water that was supposed to be rationed because he gave her a full cup, but it turns out he had given her his ration. In this, the horniest of episodes, the drama couple doesn’t do anything especially horny, but we do see them being affectionate to one another and commenting about how much it helps to have someone you can count on in a situation like this. (And Bess, somehow, considers Morgan such a person). 3) The society on the space stations around Earth has a system of inherited debt that keeps the poor oppressed for generations and this is why Danziger doesn’t like rich people (as if you need a reason). Devon notes how she paid the fees for her staff when they left the station, so Danziger is actually out of debt and would be free if they ever get off this planet. 4) The acidic lake is apparently the power source for the lighting-staff weapons that the Terrians use. Kind of a neat alien stuff detail. I’ll allow it. 5) The eagle sound is back! It occurred to me this time that, if the Council actually has humans on the planet, maybe there’s a hawk population there too. You never know.

I’ve mentioned this one before, but I gotta write something, so I might as well get back to complaining about how I don’t like Superman being about “Hope”. And to get more specific, I’m gonna talk about a story from the “Future State” event a year or so back.

I don’t have the energy to explain what “Future State” was, but the story I am particularly gonna talk about is about a future when Superman is missing and a young woman goes on a pilgrimage to Smallville and meets up at a meeting with a bunch of people who had been saved by Superman over the years. They share their stories about how Superman saved them and feel bad because they assume he’s dead.

The main character is not happy with these survivors. She thinks it’s shameful that they’ve given up hope that Superman is still out there. PDR is not happy with these survivors because they got saved by Superman and it seems like all they took from it was that Superman sure is great and we need him to be around forever. Unlike main character (whose name I have not committed to memory), I don’t care if these people think Superman is dead.

I have to be clear, these Future State issues do point out that Superman’s supposed “giving us hope” was accomplished via doing good acts. The main character says she was helped by a story he wrote as Clark Kent and she says of Superman: “If his powers had never come, he still would’ve been what he was. He’s just have saved people in different ways.” She’s clearly saying that Clark’s actions are the good thing here. But she also says “We didn’t call him Superman because of what he can do! We called him Superman because of who he is!” and that’s where the argument fails for me.

I agree that it isn’t what Superman can do (his powers) that makes him special. But I do think it’s what he actually DOES do that makes him Superman. I don’t like the idea that Clark is just inherently a good person and he is a symbol of whatever whatever good stuff. If any one of those people at the meeting said “Superman saved me, which made me realize I should be helping other people, so that’s why I became a teacher or doctor or whatever” then I’d respect them. I don’t care if they’re full of hope. They could be utterly hopeless and working to do good and I’d respect the hell out of them. That would be keeping Superman’s spirit alive whether he is alive or not.

I don’t know, I feel like I’m repeating myself and not making my point any clearer. I don’t know that it can get any clearer. This story was by the guy who is still writing the main Superman book and he has continued to weave “Hope” into his stories. The run has been popular on the Internet circles I travel in, so I feel bad that I mostly only comment on the flaws I see in it. But just remember this isn’t just a flaw I see in this run of comics, it’s a flaw I see in the entire public perception of the character! That’s… better… right?

Naturally, my attempt to watch the show had to get complicated. According to Wikipedia, this episode aired as the second last episode of the entire show when it was on television, but is episode six on the DVDs. That’s not an insignificant difference. So I’m going to watch it at this point in the run, assuming the DVDs know better and that the original airing was the result of network meddling or whatever. That means I won’t be getting the same viewing experience that Little PDR had, but maybe this one will be better. It does make me worry about a potential lack of status quo progression as the show continues, if this episode could air that late. Ah well, we’ll see.

In this episode, Yale does the narration, but the story doesn’t even pretend to be about him. This is an Alonso and Bess episode. Alonso (as ever) is the less interesting part, so let’s get that out of the way: Alonso hates that he’s still recovering from his injuries and trapped on this world (the planet is called G-889, by the way). Alonso is used to the life of a space pilot, so he’s feeling doubly grounded by this experience. In this episode, he gets so upset he tries to kill himself. He is stopped by the Terrians, who then give him a dream (even more like the Prophet stuff from DS9 because it involves him interacting with an image of someone from his life) and then he feels better. Good for him.

Bess’s story is more important. Bess and Morgan are feeling like the rest of the group think they’re idiots (and the group is correct to do so), so Bess tries to prove her worth by bartering with a Grendler (who seems like not the same one that was following Morgan before) for food, and then for other items. This goes well until it doesn’t. When Bess manages to trade for a fancy piece of technology that “locks up land” so it can’t be mined and, Bess figures, Terrians would not be able to move through it. Morgan (who is in extreme unpleasant form this time) recognizes this as a chance to stake a claim on valuable minerals on this new planet and become wealthy, and Bess is easy to convince because she hates the way Devon has been treating her as an idiot or, at best, an employee. Instead of Morgan continuing that redemption arc from last thing, he sways his wife away from the group. It’s also worth noting that when they were wed, apparently the couple took a vow to “forsake all others” which I don’t think is standard in the real world of today. We also learn in this one that Morgan has been coping with life on the planet by developing a bit of a VR addiction. I’m still hoping this couple can turn things around and stop being a convenient source of drama among the Utopians, but I’m beginning to doubt.

What else? Well, 1) I caught on that Dr. Julia is genetically enhanced. I don’t know if that’s come up before, but it definitely occurred to me that this show had a genetically-enhanced doctor before DS9 (knew that it) did. 2) I like that the group is having a lot of trouble finding edible vegetation on the planet. I’ve already commented that it’s a shame the plants look exactly like Earth plants (granted that’s because it’d be awfully hard to make a whole landscape of alien plants to film in), but making it so that they are clearly not as easy to eat as Earth plants does help. 3) Was Gaal trying to steal vehicles because he thought that he’d be able to trade them to Grendlers for something cool? No, that can’t be. He was keeping them addicted with blood, he wasn’t trading with them. 4) They used the stock eagle sound effect again. I wonder how often they’ve done that before I noticed. BUT MORE IMPORTANT: They used sound effects I recognized from Doom! I’ve often heard the stock sound effects that were used in Doom in other things (especially the doors!) because I’m sure it’s the cheapest sound pack available or something. In this case it wasn’t the doors. I think it was a dying Pinky, but it may have been an Imp, I’m not going back to check. I’m just always happy to hear these sounds that I will always associate with a computer game that happened to use them. Better than a Wilhelm Scream every time.