defying gravity: ep3, threshold

So, last ep, Ted went into Pod 4 and faced whatever was in there-- and it communicates by showing severely terrifying pictures of sandstorms on Mars, which he doesn't take well. He withdraws and refuses to talk to anyone, even the people planetside that know what he's going through.

Meanwhile, Zoe and Donner are thrown together by circumstance when Paula starts barfing every few minutes, and her refusal to accept her illness makes her cranky and puts her on the outs with Woss, which leaves her without help when she needs it. Doctor Evram, meanwhile, is busy dealing with alcohol withdrawal, and Zoe is still hearing the crying baby when she needs to be somewhere to witness something. Like the lander that wants to go somewhere it's not programmed for rebooting with new uploaded info that Command wasn't going to tell them about.

Planetside, Ajay finds out he's fired when his card doesn't let him into the building anymore, and he doesn't know what to do about it. Rolly basically tells his wife to reconnect with Ted (they were an item in the past) to get him functioning again, and doesn't like when he sees it happening through the feed, and winds up being the one that kicks Ted in the head to get him working again. Eve can't connect with him because he feels betrayed by her not telling him about it, and because she's busy indroctrinating Claire when she discovers that all the team members have the same very specific gene mutations that are both very rare and not present before the mission.

Not alot happened this ep, even though alot of story was told. We find out that the relationship between Zoe and Donner was harder than expected; she wanted to keep things professional and kept shooting him down, and so far, hasn't said that she's so-far-still having his baby from their one-night stand. Maybe their breakup was more recent, which would be cool; and would tie the present and the past of five years ago together better. Jenn and Ted were very hot and heavy in the past, and there's apparently still a bit of spark there, but she married Rolly instead, and he married Eve, niy I think both aren't all that long-lived yet. Whatever that thing is, it seems to only give the same picture each time, and they aren't sure what it wants-- and it's only spoken to three people, Eve and Ted and someone we don't know about yet, so I'm thinking it's someone who went mad from it. Or died. And somehow it's changing them, all in the same ways, and including Eve and maybe the rest of the project. And there are people in black suits who know about it and aren't telling, and look very Men In Black. Who knows what they want.

So Paula's probably out for now, which leaves Donner as alt!pilot with Zoe-- though I think there's time for her to recover still? I don't know. The timeline of the mission isn't obvious. But they keep getting thrown together, mostly against their will, which makes any relationship between them kind of... weird. Do they like eachother because they really do, or because Beta wants them to? And why would it want them to? Is that dream of her being all preggers in space literal or symbolic? But best of all, it makes the idea of an in-office romance less of a chore, because it's something new-- it's manipulated and it's for some sort of other ends, and they don't know why or when.

I really hope everyone's dreams turn out to be glimpses of the future-- I'm enjoying the semi-non-linear storytelling, and if they're aware of bits of it, it's a little metafictional, too, which further complicates the plot and the interest. I hope the storylines in the past get more interesting though.

The world is pretty complete-- neat little readers, electric-looking cuty busses, money in the form of cards that pass funds to eachother without the middleman of a bank, the need for personal items to be tied down because there's only the illusion of gravity, super-sweet computers that still make sense to us, space ships that look feasible. It's near-future, and I think that makes scifi palatable; it's recognizable, possible, reasonable. But it makes the scifiness of the show seem less central, and leaves the drama sort of a weird blend of military and hospital. But I think it's finding it's feet. It knows what it is, and that's the best it can get.