Not as good as last week, but still better than the earlier episodes. Does any of the “science” used have a basis in reality? Any theories on what’s effecting the backup Tylers? It cannot be releated to the virus they infected the live-aboards with since they started dropped before Erica even came up with that plan and the effects were clearly different (coffee guy simply collapsed, no vomiting pink foam). Also I love how Erica doesn’t seem that concerned with the fact that her planned failed and she condemed at least 29 innocent people to death (granted they were going to die anyway). Also Diana still as the ability to Bliss, so apparently it’s not as connected with fertility as I though. Lisa needs to become fertile in order to Bliss, but Anna & Diana retained their abilities after xenomenopaus.
Erica moved to quickly from “evey human life is precious” to “the end justifies the means”.
It makes perfect sense that once she becomes the leader she would move more that direction. And I understand she also is angry with the death of her ex husband and quasi-kidnapping of her son, but I still think it should have been more gradual.
Yes, I thought it was pretty abrupt too, but they don’t know if there will be another season. Everything has to be abrupt now.
Science is still completely dumb. Could have done without the kid full of needles scene. Abrupt character shifts… (My wife HATED the sex scene. Waste of time, she said. I was OK with it, but I think it means Hobbs is toast soon.)
But the plot keeps moving… and I hate to love this show.
I don’t understand why Diana stays in the Dungeon if she has secret escape pods. Lisa and Ryan can come and go from the dungeon as they please, can’t they let her out? Or does it serve her plans better to stay?
Placing my bets:
Tyler develops some kind of crazy superpowers due to his gene injection (Bleah!!!)
Hobbs is Toast, more angst for Erica, maybe even her fault.
Joshua has an epiphany, remembers his past life and flips sides, 5 minutes later, he dies.
Queen egg hatches, ages, gets skin, and looks just like Lisa. Lisa’s actress, Ms. Vanderwhatshername, gets to play Lisa and evil Lisa.
If evil Lisa doesn’t happen, the new queen will be played by Summer Glau.
This was a pretty good episode. But with all their technology, is that mega-needle machine the best they can do to extract DNA? Never heard of a cheek swab?
I called the little love scene between Erica and whats-his-name way early in this episode, btw.
Joshua explained to Anna that the stripped DNA ladders led to the symptoms exhibited by the boys from Barcelona, Beijing and Johannesburg. The only way to fix it is with the combined DNA serum. (Ironically, it was the failure of Erica’s DNA bomb plan that saved her son in the end.)
The scientist said the DNA bomb will corrupt the reproductive function of any DNA it encounters. So it doesn’t matter at what point it gets mixed in. Once it gets into the 29 males, they all become useless as breeding partners for Lisa. Erica knew from the previous episode that the Visitors are combining special traits from each live-aboard in order to make the super DNA to accelerate their evolution.
Sorry to ruin the complain-fest, but not all cells are the same, especially when it comes to reproduction or cloning. Only a subset of human cells exhibit pluripotency (i.e. stem cells) and your average cheek cell is useless for making zygotes. You need a sperm cell and an ovum for that and I’m pretty sure those don’t come in Crackerjack boxes. Well, unless someone at the Crackerjack factory was really bored and you happened to get the special “surprise”.
Can’t you also get them from bone marrow? And I imagine it would be rather challenging to show the Vistors harvesting eggs and sperm on network TV and still make it clear to the viewer what’s going on (yes I did think about this when BSG had the egg farm and Ron Moore mentioned there were similiar sperm farms).
Oh, speaking of the needle machine; I just love how oddly concerned the Visitors are for their victims’ modesty. Yes they do strip them naked, but the table’s mid restraint conviently covers their crotch. That in itself isn’t implausible, but that the use a similiar restrain to cover female chests, but not male is. Especially since men have more upper body strength and might logically require more restraints. And naturaly nobody loses control of their bowels or bladder. And is was a bit out of character for Anna to have a child sedated when she doesn’t bother with the adults.
Did anyone else think the tortured black woman in the beginning was going to be Ryan’s daughter? I wonder if that was an intentional fake out or an inadvertent one.
Yeah this bothered me. Talk about heel faced turn. Especially since she’s being a dick about it. She could have at least pretend she has some qualms to the priest.
It’s not clear whether they can’t let her out, or they or her is choosing to stay for now.
I think we can all get behind that. Although I’d like to see some rivalry from Ryan’s daughter too.
This was just the latest group of live aboard people. They already had a huge archive of previously extracted DNA. On different ships. It’s silly that the DNA would come into contact with any of the other DNA at all. It was explicitly stated that they needed to not just ruin the DNA in this group, but also the already acquired DNA.
We’re already making great strides in turning regular cells back into stem cells. And even regular cells have the complete DNA sequence, it’s just the cells that have differentiated and specialized. An advanced alien species, which has the technology to hybridize multiple species from different planets, would have no problem surreptitiously getting all the human DNA they need by disguising themselves as baristas and stealing the used cups. Even if they felt the need to get actual stem cells, they could have extracted them from people at the health centers under the guise of some other simple procedure with one needle and no need for an elaborate torture machine.
And don’t get me started on the breeding potential’s ‘missing DNA’.
I still find the show entertaining, but in terms of techno-babble biology, they should have at least made up some fake terminology to make it easier to ignore.
Okay, I think I figured out the complaint. You seem to think that the DNA bomb affects a different section of the infected live-aboard’s DNA than what will be harvested. To use an analogy, if the complete DNA is a book, the Visitors might need page 39 from the infected live-aboard, but the DNA bomb only corrupts pages 1-10. So, if the Visitors take page 39 and put it into the new book that is only missing page 39, then you’re right, everything’s fine.
I interpreted the DNA bomb to affect, say, the 13th word of every page. So when the Visitors snip out page 39, it will contain enough of the bomb to corrupt the new book they paste into.
Although the show has not explained exactly how the Visitor’s whirling jizz mixer works, if you need your made-up interpretation to be the only possibility, then yeah, you should probably stop watching the show because you can always come up with a “broken” plot hole that will annoy the hell out of you. By the way, I will also concede that if the aliens only need “page 39” from a particular human, then yeah, a simple cheek swab will do it.
But they’re not extracting the DNA for reproduction or cloning - just to fill in the DNA missing from the humans they want to breed with Lisa. Their intended breeding program (the non-Lisa kind) seems as though it’ll require whole people (well, women) not just some extracted DNA.
So…Erica and Hobbs, huh? How’s Jack going to take that when he finds out? “Dammit! I got excommunicated for you, and you still take up with that guy?!” You know, I’ve never been able to decide if Hobbs is attractive or not, but I guess Erica has.
I don’t find her about-face about collateral damage to be terribly out of character, by the way. She’s lost both her ex and her son, so it’s within reason to expect her to be jaded and ready to try less cautious methods. She doesn’t have much to lose anymore, and that makes people take risks.
People are saying they expect the Hobbs/Erica hookup to mean he’s gonna die. Well, maybe, but I bet first there’s some melodrama about Erica finding out (maybe he confesses) about his role in her ex getting whacked.
You know, I’ve never been able to decide if Hobbs is attractive or not, but I guess Erica has.