Taylor and Jim are examining the portal exist – before the
4th Pilgrimage when the exit arrived, the portals used to open in a
fairy wide area – including a pilgrimage opening in the middle of a lake. The
portal opening fixes the exit in place. And the 11th pilgrimage is
due very soon, and Taylor wants the spy. Which involves questioning more of the
women in the infirmary – including Skye, the spy – and she makes playing chess
with Josh her alibi.
Back at the Shannon household sibling annoyances continue
and Maddy’s little hand-held tablet thing breaks. Alas, until the 11th
Pilgrimage arrives, it’s going to be ahrd for her to get a replacement part and
there’s a colony wide shortage (yes, these little machines that everyone uses
needs parts they can’t produce and have a shortage of. This is because Terra
Nova is run by people who are as capable of organising this colony as I am of
setting up a moon base). Josh has advice
on where she may be able to get a new chip (possibly illicitly) before leaving to
his new apprenticeship. On the way he meets up with Skye who wants him to lie
for her. While he’s originally reluctant, she manages to talk him into it.
That night, Skye leaves Terra Nova, goes to an outpost
where she picks up a gun and goes to see the Sixers with further intel. She goes
to see her mother, bringing food – and Lucas Taylor is there waiting for her.
He has a job for her (and is being suitably menacing about it), he needs his equations
to be finished, he could do it by hand in months or in Terra Nova’s futurewiki
in an hour. And if Skye doesn’t co-operate, her mother dies.
Jim is walking around ordering Washington how to secure
the perimeter (yes, it’s official, Jim is well and truly above Washington on
the ladder) and checks Skye’s alibi with Josh – Josh lies for Skye. And Skye
goes and does Lucas’s coding in the Eye and returns with it to him – he’s happy
and dismisses her, nice guy.
But, after weeks of Skye going out to visit her
mother/illicit still/just for shits and giggles, Washington and Jim have finally
decided to check for quiet ways in and out and have footage of Skye sneaking
out through a drainage ditch. Jim realises that Josh has been lying and goes to
confront him about it and he admits he lied.
Jim takes the new to Taylor – who has been raising Skye
as his ward almost since her parents died (as far as he knew, since her mother
is still alive and with the Sixers) with
lots of proof of her leaving, her faked alibis, her stories not adding up, the
patches in her times. Taylor is shocked and wants Jim to check it with Connor –
his man in the Sixer camp (assuming Connor did actually become his mole and not
just join the Sixers…) because when it’s someone Taylor likes he needs overwhelming,
beyond any doubt at all, reasonable or otherwise proof – not just a vague
suspicion which is normally all it takes
for the Supreme Leader to pass sentence.
Taylor plays chess with Skye with lots of
totally-not-subtle “I didn’t see that one coming” and “your move” significant
references while also discussing a convoy he intends to lead. He goes off on
the convoy and Skye leaves Terra Nova quickly. Jim and Taylor set up to ambush
them (yes, Jim’s even leading military operations now) but nothing happens. The
Sixers don’t attack. Taylor can’t understand why Skye didn’t tell them and Jim
realises that none of their really important patrols of military manoeuvres
have been attacked (really? Because I seem to recall once or twice when they
were) and makes the leap that Skye is working under duress and only giving the
Sixers unimportant information
Switch to Skye trying to bring food for her mother and Mira threatening her with the bad intel she’s been giving the Sixers – especially since the Sixers saw the convoy and Skye didn’t report on it. She also gets to see the increasingly creepy and disturbing Lucas who is very excited about his calculations being finished. He warns her that she shouldn’t go back to Terra Nova because his employers are going to come through the portal and flatten the place because “to control the past is to control the future.” He also doubles up his daddy issues and is gleeful that he gets to beat his father, something he’s wanted to do since he was 14.
Skye goes to her mother and confesses and cries because the bad people she gives information to are going to do bad things. Her mother tells her to stop being a spy and if she had known she would have stopped it long ago – she tells her to go see Taylor and tell him everything.
She runs to Taylor who is, obviously not happy with her, and
tells him everything. He refuses to believe her but she convinces him by
handing out a significant date that Lucas gave her for when he and Taylor first
had a rift.
At the portal, the guards kindly line up directly in
front of it so Lucas can knock them all over with a blast of portal energy. Leaving
Lucas alone to greet Jim and Taylor and Lucas to spill his special brand of unstable
ranting before he steps back into the portal – going back to the future.
At terra Nova Skye cries on Josh’s shoulder about abandoning
her mother when she’s called to the infirmary. Her mother is there – rescued by
Curran at Taylor’s instruction and a supply of the cure for her illness which
Elizabeth and Malcolm can now study.
Taylor reveals to Jim that Lucas hates him because he
never rescued his mother in Somalia and they both prepare to defend Terra Nova
against whatever forces Lucas’s employers bring through the portal. Taylor
rallies Terra Nova making a big grand speech to them about being under attack
(you know, if he hadn’t adopted supreme secrecy all along then he could have
been more ready for this – and his people).
In rather classic Terra Nova fashion, while everyone else
is involved in the plot, Maddy is doing something else (Maddy and Elizabeth are
quite good at this) and is trading around to try and get her tablet fixed –
which means trading a wheel to Casey for a core. She gets a wheel but he’s
already given the core to Boylan. She goes to Boylan to trade for the core but
he gives it to her when he realises that she’s Jim’s daughter and hopes she’ll
tell Jim what a nice guy he is. Maddy, having the sense of a concussed dodo and
not having the slightest idea about corruption, accepts in confusion.
Washington has now been completely sidelined by Jim – as Mira
has by Lucas. This is extremely unimpressive.
Do I even have to express how ridiculous it is that these
tablets – tablets everyone needs and uses – are dependent on Hope Plaza
imports?
