3-10. "Dandelion Sky"
Written by Georgia Lee
Directed by David Grossman
First aired 13 June 2018
SYNOPSIS
The Thomas Prince enters the Ring. Tilly recognizes Melba as Clarissa Mao and, at Anna's indirect recommendation, Tilly confronts her. Melba triggers her strength mod and attacks Tilly.
As Holden approaches the "Station" at the center of the Ring Space, an opening appears and Miller urges him to enter. Holden pauses and demands that Miller explain what's going on. Miller tells him that there used to be a civilization here, but now they're all gone, and that he needs Holden to complete a task for him. They enter the Station.
Convinced Holden has gone insane, the Martians send Bobbie and a team after him in a drop ship. They arrive at the Station, disembark, and enter it. Inside they confront Holden, who refuses to come with them. Bobbie opens fire, but the bullets are stopped. The Lieutenant hurls a grenade, but it too is stopped, and everything in the Ring Space is forced to slow down even more. The Lieutenant is then disassembled and absorbed into the Station. Holden inserts his hand into an open circuit, experiences a stream of visions, then collapses. Bobbie picks up Holden and they return to the drop ship.
ANALYSIS
"Then how come it is that every time there's some cluster-fuck shit-storm situation in the universe, there's James Holden, shrugging his shoulders, saying 'How the hell did I end up here?'"
Just as with the previous episode, there are only a few worthwhile glimmers, Holden's striking "vision" being one. I'm a bit disappointed that so much of the plot hangs on the "speed limit" thing in the Ring Space. On the plus side we have Tilly and her one-liners. Anna's tribute to the crewman who committed suicide is genuinely touching. As Tilly put it, "You're really good at that." I must also note that Amos is becoming ever more philosophical. Alex is freaking out and tells Amos, "We're playing way out of our league here." Amos comes back with, "That's been true ever since we've been sharpening sticks and going after lions."
Best Scene: Holden's visions after completing the circuit are as puzzling, disjointed and amazing as one might expect (although I happen to think the sequence could have been longer and more disjointed).
Best Line: Tilly is trying to wrap her head around the concept of inertia, the "whole bodies at rest and in motion" thing. "I feel like there's a sex joke in there somewhere, but I'm not finding it."
Technobabble Alert: Now we're up to our nipples in Technobabble. ProtoMiller is bad enough; we also have to deal with all of the complicated rules of the Ring Space as well as the Station. Awesome effects aside, the nonsense going on inside the Station left me cold, especially when Holden started getting all deep and psychological with ProtoMiller.
Amusing nonsense: Whoever was responsible for keying in the captions made a humorous little boo-boo. The UN scientist observing their transit through the Ring says, "Emissions are swamping our sensors." But the caption reads, "Emissions are swamping our censors." Hehehe.
SCORE: 