This time Devon is narrating again, but it isn’t really her episode. This one is mostly about the crash that left our cast stranded on this planet.

Tensions are running high among the survivors and they’re looking for someone to blame for the crash that got them all into this. This leads to Devon ordering Yale to scan his computer memory for any details of the crash to see if he can tell it was an accident, or if there was something more going on. Devon doesn’t get the answer she wants: there was something more going on.

Concurrently, the group stumble across one of the other evacuation pods that came down to the world and there are more survivors! But just barely. Most of them are dead and those who remain are stricken with an illness. Danziger is among those who discover this group, so he imposes a quarantine while he and the others start dying and Dr. Julia has to race to find a cure. (I respect how quickly the crew realizes they need to quarantine the members who were exposed. It’s nice to see people respect a quarantine).

Alongside that plot, our resident selfish bastard Morgan has been feeling like his selfish bastardry has been making him less popular among the survivors AND he has been seeing a Grendler that has been following him around. Not the group, but it’s been following Morgan specifically and hiding from the rest of them. Morgan confesses about his selfish bastard behaviour to his wife Bess and her reply boils down to “Yeah, I know you’re a selfish bastard. But let’s confess to the crew to make it better” so they do that (Bess does most of the talking).

These plots weave together like this: The saboteur who caused the ship turns out to be one of Danziger’s friends who happens to be among the sick survivors in the other pod. It’s not her fault though, because the evil government types had stuck a behaviour chip into her, like the one in Yale, to make her do it. The government had also intended to blow up the Eden Project’s ship, so they were REALLY into destroying this excursion. When it is determined that Grendler saliva can cure the disease, he begins a redemption arc in earnest by putting himself in danger by meeting with the Grendler that has been following him and acquiring the saliva to make the cure, which he does by suffering the indignity of having to give the Grendler his clothes. The cure is made in time to cure Danziger and the other exposed member of the crew (a recurring character named Baines), but the other pod’s remaining survivors don’t make it, but do find peace in knowing that the saboteur had been brainwashed, not actually acting with ill intent.

In the end there is a bit where Dr. Julia secretly contacts someone else saying “I’ve joined you on the planet” so there is someone she knows about on this world. But she doesn’t seem to like them and she isn’t happy they caused the crash. I guess she’s talking to government folk. Now this has to be what the Terrians were talking about when they said humans had been to the world before.

Assorted other thoughts:
1) While none of the other pod’s survivors that we meet survive the episode, we are told that they had split into groups and gone other ways when they crashed, so there still could be more of them out there. 2) True screams again in this one. I skipped mentioning it last time it happened, but I ought to be thorough. True’s Scream Count is up to at least six now, assuming I’ve not missed others. 3) At one point we hear a stock eagle sound effect (which is, I believe, some other bird that is always used for eagles because real eagle sounds are less majestic), which means some alien on this world makes that classic sound. 4) I don’t think I’ve even mentioned that the crew has a humanoid robot to help out because it has mattered so little this far, but Zero, as it is known, does get to bring supplies to the quarantined crew in this one. 5) We’re told that Grendlers secrete saliva from every orifice. Good for them. Also, we’re never really told why this one is following Morgan in the first place. He’s still there even after he gets Morgan’s clothes.

If anyone actually visited this site and looked around, they’d see that there has been a “Store” section on here that was completely unused for a long time. Since 2010 or so it has consisted only of the following:

Well the future is now! I have begun a shop on Etsy on which I am selling a little printable colouring an activity book called The Many Monsters of Mackestry Manor. I hope to turn that into a series of such books, but hopefully I will have other things on the store as well down the line.

I have opted to keep using the name Bottomless Hippopotamus to maintain a continuity in my attempts to accomplish this. Maybe I only ever sold one or two things on Cafepress (not including the Adventure Dennis mug I still own), but it was still a part of my past that led to this shop here, so the name continues and I can tell myself this is what I’ve been building toward after all these years of failure and stagnation. This is, hopefully, me taking a step in the right direction.

For the purpose of narration and such, the focal point of this episode is Alonso, the character played by the Shark Hunter himself, Antonio Sabato Jr. Of the main cast, Alonso has probably been the least interesting character to me so far. His deal is that he was the pilot on the ship that crashed and he was never supposed to see the surface, so he never took the pills that the rest of the group took to keep themselves healthy, so he was more wounded than the rest in the crash and is still recovering, but he also has the strongest connection to the Terrians and communicates with them in the dreamscape. Anyway, he narrates this episode, but it isn’t really his episode. This is a direct continuation of True’s plot from last time.

I assumed Gaal was going to be gone for the show for a while, but absolutely not. He is back in this very episode and he has managed to capture a tribe of Terrians and is making slaves of them using shock collars that were presumably used when the planet was a penal colony. We also learn that the bone necklace that Gaal has been wearing all along has been made with Terrian bones and that Terrians are unable to hurt one another and also that wearing a necklace of Terrian bones is sufficient to make them unable to attack you as well. The enslaved Terrians reach out through the dreamscape to get the group’s help (Gaal calls the group “the Utopians” so is that what I should be calling them?) and it turns out that there is now a link between the Terrians and Uly, the child they healed. When Terrians suffer, so too does Uly.

The group is willing to help the Terrians (even if some only to help Uly), but young True is still torn. She still trusts the manipulative bastard. She goes to him and warns him and he lies to her and all that. But he messes up when he shows off his enslaved Terrians and tortures on so that it dies. That turns True against him at last and she sneakily gets a message to the group. In the ensuing scuffle is is actually True who defeats Gaal, destroying his necklace, so that the freed Terrians can exact their revenge. The Terrians drag Gaal into the dirt to maybe never be seen again (or maybe he will, I have no idea if Tim Curry will be back).

And then Alonso gets a scene where he is sad that a Terrian died, just to remind us that this was his episode. Good for you, Alonso. You really knocked it out of the park there, pal. Really you did.

Some other thoughts on the episode:

1) Danziger isn’t fond of Terrians and has a tendency to call them “Diggers” in a way I don’t care for. Most of the time Danziger is intended to be a character the audience roots for, but his racism is unbecoming (but does allow for more nuance). 2) The Utopians encounter rain on the new world for the first time and I like the scene. At first they panic and run for cover until Dr. Julia can scan it and make sure it is safe. Once that is confirmed, they love the rain. 3) Morgan is still the character used to voice the unpopular opinions. If his near-death experience has had a lasting effect on him, it is taking its time. 4) It is confirmed that Pegasus the horse ran away. Presumably he’s out there having weird horse-on-an-alien-planet adventures until he turns up again (and if he doesn’t turn up again, definitely he was eaten by Grendlers). 5) Yale’s behaviour-modifying cybernetics are supposed to include an aversion to using weapons, but in a moment of stress he overcomes this. The risk of him going criminal increases.

ALIEN STUFF: We learn a bit more about the Terrians here. In spite of their general humanoid appearance, Dr. Julia’s scanners can’t even say if they’re animal, vegetable, or mineral. We’re also told that they are all male, for whatever that means in a species that is utterly different from Earth life. But in the end, Alonso says that in spite of the biological differences, humans and Terrians may be more alike that they realize. Shut up, Alonso. Go hunt some sharks or something.

This episode’s focal character is True, the young daughter of Danziger (Clancy Brown’s character). She’s pretty unhappy with things, which is understandable given that she’s crashed onto a planet she was never meant to be on, and her father is busy keeping the equipment that everyone needs running. She feels ignored and chafes against the rules she’s expected to follow. Gaal, our Tim Curry-portrayed “stranded astronaut” who is really a penal colony survivor sees True’s dissatisfaction and uses it to manipulate her.

I still don’t have a handle on Gaal’s motives. He claims he wants off the planet, but he’s scheming and sabotaging and working with the Grendlers. If he actually wanted to leave the planet, he’d be working with the humans, rather than against them. Today he is specifically trying to steal one of the group’s vehicles. What he wants it for, I don’t know. But we do learn that he’s giving the Grendlers a periodic taste of his blood to keep them working for him. Gaal is up to something.

But for all his scheming, Gaal isn’t the mastermind he hopes. Danziger is suspicious of him, so he makes sure the vehicles aren’t stealable. And, though Danziger thinks Devon is too trusting of Gaal, even she is having Yale do an investigation on the mysterious stranger (It turns out that one of Yale’s cyborg powers is a computobrain that lets him surf an Internet-like database). Yale notes that Gaal has a tattoo that says “E2” that connects him to the penal colony program that we, the viewers, learned about last episode (and it also is like “Earth 2”, y’know?). Essentially the group, except True, has lost any reason to trust Gaal.

Gaal bonds with True by agreeing with her that the rest of the group are jerks and making her feel special. He tries, but fails, to get her help in stealing a vehicle. She successfully steals a horse* but that’s not really what he wanted. Still, he rolls with it and continues to manipulate the little girl. In the end, she is rescued by her father and Gaal is driven away at gunpoint, but True remains loyal to the stranger who treated her well. She assumes, as do I, that their paths shall cross again.

* Oh, by the way, they grow a horse in this one. The group find some canisters that were part of their lost cargo. It turns out they’re cans of horse. As in, they activate the can and a couple hours later it grows into a horse. This miracle technology is apparently advanced even within the sci-fi future of the show and it isn’t without its flaws. The horse grows to adult stature over the course of a day and it is only through the hard work of young Dr. Julia that it doesn’t continue aging until it dies. Uly names the horse Pegasus and, I’ll be honest, I can’t tell if Gaal gets the horse in the end or if we’re meant to assume it ran back to camp. I’d assume the latter, but I figure we’ll find out next time.

Most importantly, this episode gave us this: