Beacon 23: S1-E3–5 – Rocky & rolling

[00:00:00] OK, David. This is where we're supposed to choose a side. Green or black? John, my soul is as black as night. Your turn. I am black for life. So, we're not fighting? I thought this is where HBO wanted us to, like, pick sides and fight and stuff.

[00:00:24] Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find plenty to disagree about on the pod, but we seem to agree on one thing. We both really like the show. The politics. The drama. The lore. It was made for the Lorehounds.

[00:00:36] And since we just finished recapping season one, we couldn't be more ready to defend our black queen in the Dance of the Dragons.

[00:00:43] And with the season pass option and supercast, listeners can get early, ad-free access to each weekly scene-by-scene deep dive, plus our custom show guide with all the characters and connections. See you in the Lorehounds podcast feed each week for our dragonfire hot, but probably positive, takes.

[00:01:00] The Lorehounds House of the Dragon coverage is also safe for teen green consumption. Side effects may include a deeper understanding of dragon lore, a hardened conflict with itself and an inescapable urge to read the book fire and blood by George R. R. Martin. Dragon seeds may experience burning.

[00:01:43] Hello and welcome back or welcome the first time to Wool Shift Dust, the adaptation analysis podcast. We're back to discuss episodes three, four and five of Beacon 23, the TV adaptation of the Hugh Howie novel by that name now airing on MGM+.

[00:01:59] I'm Alisha and I'm representing the book readers on this deep dive journey. But don't worry, we won't be spoiling ahead.

[00:02:06] We'll spoil the episodes released so far once we get to the spoilers section and I'll point out which things have been taken from the source material and which things are new for the show, which is most of them.

[00:02:16] But I will not be talking about anything from the book that might spoil what's coming in this series, in part because in this case, I don't really know. But mostly to protect the innocence of not only show only watchers at home, but also my co-host Luke. Right, Luke?

[00:02:31] Yeah, I am once again the fountain of all ignorance. So yeah, thank you for protecting. Thank you for protecting my ignorance, Alisha. I mean, in this case, like my ignorance is more than my knowledge in terms of this adaptation. Fair enough.

[00:02:47] So without getting into spoilers yet, what did you think of these three episodes that I was so recovering like the middle of the season here? It's gotten a lot darker than the first two episodes I thought. I mean, we've got multiple murders. True. We've got...

[00:03:05] Although they set the tone for that, yeah. Yeah, we've got abusive relationships all over the place. Everybody is getting nicely coasted off the quip pretty much all the time. And we have Stephen Root. Love a bit of Stephen Root. Yeah, we got full Stephen Root.

[00:03:23] We got some answers in episode five at least, which... Well, we got a nice origin story in episode four too. So I'm looking forward to talking about them. How would you rank these three episodes favorite to least favorite? Ooh, I would say reverse order five, four, three.

[00:03:42] Yeah, I'm the same because yeah, like I said, five has got some answers. Four is like this nice standalone story and three, it's good, but it's just the other two are, you know... stronger even.

[00:03:54] Yeah, I definitely recommend the book again for anyone who hasn't read it, who isn't Luke. That it's less than 200 pages and it's fun and fast and very different from the show. So it won't even really spoil anything, but it will give you some hints.

[00:04:07] So anyone who's interested in that, Abby and I broke it down in the Walshift Dust Book Club and you'll find that link in the show notes. Now yeah, I've also been seeing some interviews popping up with the...

[00:04:19] Well, he's technically the showrunner of the second season, but he seems to have played a big role in the first season as well. Glenn Mazzano, who, you know, best known for other shows like Walking Dead,

[00:04:30] really a revered showrunner, sounds like he was really able to pull the seasons together to make a coherent story with him filming back to back like this. I know I sent one of them to you.

[00:04:41] Yeah, I mean, it was only a short and sort of like six minute interview, but I thought the bit that was really interesting to me was the guy doing the interview asked him about whether there was going to be a cliffhanger at the end of season one. Right.

[00:04:55] And he kind of didn't directly answer the question when he did talk about, you know, I'm a fan, I've seen other shows, I've worked on other shows that got to cliffhanger and didn't deliver. They're not going to keep anything back too much from the audience.

[00:05:08] There's a line where it says the audience are the only people in the show that know everything. Yeah. Which I wasn't quite sure whether that was like a double, you know, whether that was a fake out, to be honest. Oh, no, I don't think it's a fake out.

[00:05:20] I think because he talked about, I'm not sure if there's in this interview or another one, but he also talked about putting a lot of trust in the audience in terms of like not wanting to spell things out too much for people.

[00:05:31] Now, I know we've had people say before that they liked that this show doesn't handhold when it comes to explaining the technology and it seems like it's like that a lot for the plot. They're just, he says in one of the interviews,

[00:05:44] we're not going to give a bunch of exposition dumps. Characters will find things out as they find it out. And then audiences will be the only ones who see all the different sides.

[00:05:52] I see all the different pieces of the puzzle, so it's up to us to put them together. I mean, frankly, and I hope we get this in episode six, seven and eight. I could do with a bit more exposition at this point.

[00:06:04] Well, I think five gave that to us, but I'm happy with, I'm happy with the pace that things are unrolling personally. Very happy. I'm relieved that they're not doing, you know, that they don't feel

[00:06:17] like they have to over explain to us, but I understand that some people are starting to feel like things are flying over their heads. So I do think it's going to come together. I think it's going to be interesting doing this review then,

[00:06:28] because I'm definitely one of those people. I need a good solid exposition dump. OK. It's like there are a whole bunch of bits of plot. I don't really understand yet or don't know where it's going.

[00:06:41] But the characters are compelling enough that I want to keep watching it to find out. Yeah. Well, he did say Glamatsano. He said in his discussions with Hugh Howie, the author of the book, this is based on that what he really respect about what he said is that

[00:06:57] this is a character driven story and that's it's this isn't you know, there is a war going on. We know that's there in the background. But like the book, it's not about battle scenes. It's about the human drama that plays out in the middle of that.

[00:07:12] Human and rock drama. That's a tease. But yeah, OK, so I'm here to give that exposition dump as much as I can. We're going to get into all of the spoilers from this episode and what I think it means

[00:07:29] based on what I've read from the books without again spoiling ahead and what I know about science and other things. So yeah, let's get into that right after this break. Researcher Quest granted. Spoilers unlock. All right, so starting with episode three. Why can't we go on as three?

[00:07:50] This was directed by Dan Percival, who is the same director as the first two episodes. So we talked about him in our last breakdown. We have new writers for this one. We have Ira Stephen Bear with story input from Richard Khan.

[00:08:03] So Bear, he's best known for Star Trek, but also other things like Outlander and Khan, he's acted in a bunch of sci-fi shows himself. But he's also done writing work, especially working with Bear on Outlander. Yes, I mean, I know Steve Irish, Stephen Bear

[00:08:21] very well from specifically from Deep Space Nine. He was the showrunner for, I think, from season four onwards in Deep Space Nine. And actually on the back of watching Beacon 23, I've actually started rewatching on Deep Space Nine and Paramount Plus.

[00:08:38] OK, maybe it may be almost 30 years old, but it really holds up. I think it's actually my favorite Star Trek series or at least I think the most consistent one. OK, I mean, that's one that so I was starting to get out of.

[00:08:54] I was only watching like intermittently with with that and Voyager. I was no longer watching regularly. And I intend to do I just fell off the Star Trek train sometime in my early 20s, I guess.

[00:09:06] And I intend to go back to the very beginning and watch it all. This is like these projects that I've done for Marvel and Star Wars and DC. And I know this Star Trek one's going to be a doozy, but hopefully next year I'll be doing that.

[00:09:18] Yeah, well, please don't inflict the first two seasons of the next generation on yourself because nobody deserves to. Of course I will. I'm a completionist. Deserves to what? I'm a completionist. I will listen. I've sat through things like iron fist more than once, so

[00:09:36] there's always something to take out of it. Moving swiftly on. All right, so Episode three picks up right where we left off in episode two, dealing with the aftermath of the record break in. Aster, Lena Headey thinks that Halen, Stephen James seems fine,

[00:09:51] but her personal AI quote unquote harmony played by Natasha Mumba advises her to keep a weapon handy. And they notice in surveillance footage that Halen has collapsed when he got near the bag of glowing rocks, as we saw in Episode two.

[00:10:08] And Harmony is helping Bart, Wade Bogart, O'Brien recover from the hack. He says his memory is in functioning and Harmony assures him it's disordered. That's all. So you know, I think there's something more sinister going on with Bart's programming. Where do you stand on that now? Oh, definitely.

[00:10:25] I mean, yeah, there is definitely more going on with Bart. The meets the eye. Whether that is his programming or whether that is just because he's been because as we find out in the next episode, Bart is a very old AI.

[00:10:41] So whether this is just whether this is just the AI equivalent of synoliting setting and it did occur to me that that might be what's happening. Well, he tells Harmony that he was quoting Shakespeare last episode because Solomon taught it to him.

[00:10:58] He says, it's how Solomon taught me to speak properly and to get rid of his lead in mechanical drone and now it's part of his reboot protocols. Natasha Mumba's reactions in this conversation are gold. So first like in response to this, she's like, hmm,

[00:11:12] how thoughtful of him, which feels like she's saying stupid humans trying to make us like them. And then the other funny thing is he says the nightmare of being silenced again and she is like, I'm sure it was trying. She's like, why is this AI so emotional?

[00:11:33] Are you still hoping for a romance between the two of them? I'm hoping for it, but that doesn't look like the direction they go in. Hey, we've hopefully got another season and a half, hopefully. Yeah, hopefully. Who knows?

[00:11:46] So Bart says he's ready to resume control of the beacon, but Haylon's not into this idea. He at least doesn't want to hear Bart's voice and Bart unjustly silenced again. Are you team Bart or team Haylon on this silencing issue? I'm team Bart. Yeah, I feel for him.

[00:12:04] Yeah, I mean, to be honest, he and Haylon just need to sit down and hug it out because they both done things to each other that aren't cool. But like Haylon's constant solution to switch Bart off. It's not this, it's not the solution Haylon.

[00:12:22] Just sit down and talk. No, it's not the way. Yeah. And yeah, Astor gives Haylon the beacon security ring on a chain. We first saw her find it somewhere in the office in the first episode.

[00:12:33] So yeah, I'm a bit confused about how Haylon got separated from it and she found it, but regardless, we need to know this ring is important. It's the key to controlling everything in the beacon. Whoever has it basically controls Bart and controls the beacon.

[00:12:49] It looks different, by the way, from the one we saw in episode four, the 180 years ago flashback, so that one was what we'll talk about. It was lost. So I guess it was replaced over the centuries in between, which makes sense.

[00:13:03] So yeah, so Astor shows Haylon her necklace then, which has a pendant and a crystalline shape on it. It's the same shape she sees when she looks at the glowing blue bits of the magic space rocks under a microscope and Astor says it's all connected.

[00:13:17] And when she and Haylon got blottled on the Gwibb vibes up in what they call the cupola, she tells him the necklaces from her mom. So it seems a story she told last episode about growing up in the Menelaus colony

[00:13:29] and her mom getting her out but not following. That seems to be true. Well, some of that might be true. And she says that her mom told her a story about what the pendant meant. So I'm assuming, hoping we'll get this story by the end of the season.

[00:13:44] Oh, yeah. It's interesting in the book, we find out that not everyone experiences the GWV vibes the same way that, well, I call him Proto is the protagonist of the book because he doesn't have a name of his own.

[00:13:59] So I'm just going to call him Proto to separate him from Haylon as we talk about the differences. But yeah, so it's interesting that here it seems like everyone gets that Gwibb buzz unless they all have the same brain exposure somehow. Yeah.

[00:14:14] And like everybody is high on the show like yeah, at least half the time, but he just nicely toasted. I mean, the Gwibb buzz comes from the book, but it's yeah, it's mostly Haylon.

[00:14:26] Although NASA does in the book, at least they say don't hang around the GWB too much. But I love the way the chemistry is developing between Haylon and Astor. What do you think? Yeah, and I think that's that's huge credit to

[00:14:40] to Alina Heady and Stephen James because I think a lot of that is a lot of that is communicated through body language and nonverbally, not necessarily through the script. Right. So I think it's a really good bit of acting on both of them.

[00:14:58] And you really sort of get the sense of just have damage. They both are as individuals. Increasingly, you sort of get the sense that they're not here by accident. Right. Well, that's what Astor thinks. Yeah, with Astor's necklace and the whole thing with Haylon,

[00:15:15] there's clearly some force or some body that has brought them to this place for some reason that we don't know yet. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And by the way, they also have the talk in the scene about the

[00:15:29] lighthouse that mirrors the passage from the book that I read in the last episode. But then they throw the bodies out of the Beacon's airlock for a floater space funeral and when they come back in, the lights go out. And Haylon says this happens sometimes.

[00:15:44] But when he calls for Bart's help, Astor reminds him he didn't want to hear from Bart, so she calls on Harmony for help instead. And they joke about Astor qualifying for combat pay from the QTA.

[00:15:54] And she insists the QTA will help them set things right with the ISA. But Haylon is understandably skeptical after the whole them sending records to blow up the ship Astor was on thing. But Astor wants to know why Haylon is having visions, which he calls nightmares.

[00:16:09] She thinks it's connected to her pendant and the rocks. And Haylon just wants to get out of there and get somewhere with an atmosphere and rain and stand on terra firma, he says. Astor says she'll get him wherever he's going.

[00:16:21] So interesting, she says she no longer sees him as a psychopath. And he says he no longer thinks she's an innocent ISA employee. So it seems like her opinion of him has gotten better, but his of her has gotten worse. What do you think?

[00:16:37] I would definitely say it's gotten worse. But on the other hand, this is a guy who is desperate for company. Right. And so I think I think he'll take what he can get and he is genuinely intrigued by Astor. Right. No, he definitely seems drawn to her.

[00:16:56] Yeah. Yeah. And I think I keep thinking like what is a QTA stand for? And do you think it's something like the Quantum Tunneling Authority? I have no idea. I mean, that's I have no idea what QTA is or what it wants or yeah,

[00:17:11] or really like what the end game that they're working towards is. OK. I mean, we definitely in episode four get more of an idea of that. But just I think it can't be a coincidence that there's a device

[00:17:22] called the QT and then this agency that we know based on episode four is technologically based is called the QTA. So my guess is Quantum Tunneling Authority or something like that. OK. So Haley goes down to check on the light situation and Harmony's gotten some

[00:17:39] back on, but not the ones around the living quarters. Haley leaves a room and Bart's salty about Haley and as usual, despite Harmony trying to point out that the Wreckers were the bad guys, it's not him. She says she's examined the data of Solomon's accident,

[00:17:53] which we'll obviously talk more about in episode five, but Haley did not kill Solomon. It was undeniably an accident, she says. And she's basically done with Bart's bitching and blinks out. It's interesting. We also get revealed in this that Harmony can't go near the GWB.

[00:18:09] Yeah, I assume because it interferes with with whatever hard drive she is attached to. Because Astor's got that little cube thing that she holds in her hand. So that must be the hard drive slash intergalactic memory stick that Harmony runs off of.

[00:18:31] So I assume the GWB must damage that in some way. Oh, yeah, interfere with the broadcasting or something. But yeah, something, well it is, it's gravity waves. So I guess it's like magnetic waves are not good for electronics, I suppose. This is saying gravity wave at concentration.

[00:18:51] It's like if you hold no DVD or a blue right to a magnet, you wipe what was on the desk. Right. And this is a magnetization and normally obviously gravity doesn't hurt electronics because it's existing all around us right now. But I guess in this sort of high

[00:19:05] concentration perhaps that's what's going on. Yeah, and it's just interesting. So then we know if we see so we know anyone near the GWB, if they're actually by the GWB and not having a hallucination. Anytime we see anything there that cannot be AI.

[00:19:22] Yeah, that's a good point, actually. That's I hadn't considered that. But yeah, that's that's the way we know real people from AI. Yeah. If we know that they're actually where they say they are because that becomes an issue in episode five.

[00:19:36] So but in this episode, Haley goes downstairs to check the breakers and he gets an assassin surprise until Aster comes down and breaks up the fight. And we find out that she knows this person. It's a woman named Coley played by Sandrine Holt.

[00:19:50] So yeah, how cool was that spiked helmet where the spikes like? It was. That was that was that was very cool and retry. That was that was very sort of I got a bit of a on flux. Yeah, OK. And I think that's

[00:20:06] also well done to Haley because Coley is wearing full tactical battle armor. And she's fully prepared for a fight and Haley implants or no implants. You know, holds his own. There's a pretty even fight. Yeah. Now, I think this was cool to see Coley come in now.

[00:20:24] So when I as a book reader, when I saw that Lena Headey was playing a new character in the show, I wondered if she would be a combo of the two most important female characters from the book who are named Scarlett and Claire.

[00:20:38] And I won't talk about Claire at all yet because she doesn't even show up until later in the book, but there are a couple of characters in this three episode arc that we're talking about today that give me Scarlett vibes.

[00:20:50] And Coley is one of them mostly because she's an ex who sneaks into the beacon to surprise them. And we find out that she and Aster work together and have a somewhat complicated relationship and that they then reconnect before she dies.

[00:21:05] They're totally differently than Scarlett dies in the book. In the book, Scarlett was actually killed by an unnamed bounty hunter who was looking for her and that bounty hunter doesn't speak, but she's glad and all black versus Coley Silver and has similar badass vibes to Coley's entrance.

[00:21:21] But yeah, Coley is definitely giving me more Scarlett. So so this is how we meet the character named Scarlett in the book. I, of course, being the perspective of Proto, you know, the Halon equivalent.

[00:21:34] I feel rather conflicted as the bounty hunter disappears and I work my slow way up the first ladder. It feels like the graph panels have gone on the fritz again, twisting me this way and that. Sometimes you want the good guys to get their man.

[00:21:46] Sometimes you can't tell who the good guys are up the second ladder into my living quarters, I silenced the proximity alarm again. Then I head up the last ladder into the command pod and my mind goes back to how bad things seem to come in threes.

[00:22:00] Three bounty hunters arriving within moments of each other. Can I count them as three individual bad things and assume my day improves? I decide to a voice interrupts my thoughts. Those assholes gone, she says.

[00:22:12] I emerge up the ladder and turn to see a woman sitting in my command chair. She's got a blaster in her hand and a frown splashed across her face. It's the girl from the bounty flyer. I never thought I'd see her again.

[00:22:25] So, yeah, so Scarlet's there for a reason related to the reason she's being hunted and I'll avoid talking about what that's all about for now for spoiler reasons. But I think that part of her story might have been given to another character we'll talk about in episode five.

[00:22:37] But yeah, do you see why I am conflating them in my head? Yeah, yeah, definitely. And we say coley and Asta are in a relationship, but we find out later on in the episode it's actually quite an abusive. Yeah, well, it's actually quite an abusive relationship.

[00:22:54] I said complicated. Well, yeah, I mean, I would say. But who's the abuser in this case? Because they've both done horrible things to each other. I would say coley is probably the abuser and Asta as occasionally sort of kicked

[00:23:08] back, but the vibe I very much got from the episode was it was coley that was trying to manipulate Asta and it was coley that was abusive towards Asta. But Asta, I mean, I think in the romantic way,

[00:23:21] coley seems like it was coley more into Asta than the other way around with Asta flitting off for other affairs randomly. I guess, but can you blame her with the way coley treated her? I mean, well, I don't know. Chicken or the egg, which came first?

[00:23:36] I don't know. That's what I mean by it. So it was a very sort of this whole three episodes, the tone was darker than because yeah, it was a huge howie tone. Yeah, it was a very, a very sort of yikes toxic relationship between coley and Asta.

[00:23:52] Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So coley says she snuck on because Halen is an intruder. And he's not the person who's supposed to be in the lighthouse and the beacon was dark, so she thought she was protecting Asta.

[00:24:06] Asta asks her why she didn't just get an update from Harmony and coley replies, you know how I feel about AI. And coley scoffs that Asta's claim, the records who attacked them were hired by the QTI. So yeah, I mean, we catch coley lying later,

[00:24:22] but do you think anything of what she says is true? No. Do you know I don't like her at all? I don't like coley. No, I think she's I think she's I think she's probably another plan by QTA. Like this is what this is what I don't understand.

[00:24:40] It's like what's QTA's plan here? Because all these different strands and all these different people that they've got after this one thing, they're all just getting in each other's way. Yeah. Just like if this is like, you know, the big bad of this series,

[00:24:56] they've been really incompetent about it. Just send one guy, send one guy and wait to see what happens. But that's why so yeah, there were the extra oxygen things in in in sorry, in Astor's sleeping pod. But I don't know, did they really want her to survive?

[00:25:15] Because it feels like it feels like maybe coley snuck them in there. Like they intended to kill her and coley was like, no, I'm going to save her. If they wanted to kill her, why would you why would you destroy an entire

[00:25:27] ship full of people in order to do that? Why not just send like one assassin? Why not poison it seems? It seems unnecessarily clumsy way to try and kill. Well, I mean, because it was two birds, one stone, I guess they wanted to blow the

[00:25:44] ship anyway, because they had whatever the deal was with the records. I don't know. Yeah, it's still hazy. We still need more answers. But yeah, I trusted coley immediately less than Astor. And even though we know that Astor lies,

[00:25:56] but coley says Astor brought all of this on herself by demanding she be assigned to the mission, which is just like, makes me mad. And then so Astor shows coley the magic rock stash and I'm like, don't show this bitch anything.

[00:26:10] But I'm sorry because I was right there with you with that. Don't show the rocks. I know that a lot of people were excited to see Lena Headey and, you know, a woman loves woman relationship. And yeah, that's great.

[00:26:25] And I'm glad we got we got that on screen. But it doesn't mean I have to like her. Hardly the first time Lena Headey has done that in her career. I can think of a couple of other instances. Yeah, sure. Of her same sex partners.

[00:26:40] OK, well, I understand that a lot of people are excited about that. And I don't want to rain on that parade at all. I just, coley was not good for her. No, because that was the thing. Like, you know, no preferences as to sexuality of a partner.

[00:26:54] But coley is a bad person. Coley is a bad person doing bad things. I do feel sad for coley, but we'll talk about that more. But yeah, so Astor shows coley the magic rock stash, whether that's a good idea or not, and informs her that she's offered

[00:27:07] Haleyne a ride, which coley isn't really on board with. But all of that is delayed anyway, because there's a dark matter storm of sorts around the beacon that's going to trap them there for days, much to coley's increased chagrin. So yeah, we learn also coley is

[00:27:22] Astor's boss and that all company managers have combat training. So that's interesting because this is ostensibly a tech company, at least in the beginning. But now they're all getting combat training. Are you getting a bit of Wayland-Yutani vibes?

[00:27:37] Offer. I what did you what are the words you just said? Wayland-Yutani, you know, the company in alien. Oh, OK. That runs all the way through alien. I'm getting it. Yeah, sure. Wayland-Yutani vibe off QTA. Sure, sure. Yeah.

[00:27:50] I mean, you could also what's the company again in Terminator? Oh, oh, Cyberdyne. Cyberdyne, yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think it's a it's a bit tropy to have the evil tech company that's taking over, but yeah, it's also realistic. So I'll allow it.

[00:28:11] Elon, if you're listening, hi. Fucking sell Twitter. I'm not playing nice. So coley questions, Haleen, who says he's been on seven tours of duty with the ISA, which is two more than coley's own dad, but she's still feeling hostile.

[00:28:31] And coley also calls Aster out as being a good liar, which we've noted before. Coley then turns to Bart and is just as rude to him. She has no time for his sob story about how trying his recent ordeals have been.

[00:28:44] She says if he doesn't ignore that she's not ISA and do what she wants, she'll silence him for good. So of course, he's happy to oblige now, especially once he hears that she wants dirt on Haleen. And Haleen gives Aster a shoulder massage because she's looking stressed,

[00:29:01] which is a nice moment until a jealous coley walks in. Yeah. Oh man, this shoulder massage. Stephen James has an ASMR voice when he went for that pressure point in the forehead, it felt like he was giving me a massage.

[00:29:15] I was like, oh, how rude to interrupt coley. And Aster assures coley that there's nothing going on with Haleen. And we start to see how close these two women really are. Alone now, coley's head is in her lap and Aster tells her she killed one of the

[00:29:31] records. Apparently it was her first kill. Does that surprise you? Yeah, it does actually a little bit. Yeah, me too. Yeah, I wonder if that's true, actually. I mean, coley would know who that coley was while she was an employee of

[00:29:47] the company, but we don't know what happened. I think just based on Aster's reaction, it's true. Aster's a good liar. Yeah, but there's no reason for her to lie in that situation. I guess so. I think we can take this one on face value. OK.

[00:30:02] But coley says, isn't that my job? And Aster says, yeah, I'm going to take half your paycheck. And coley says, you're going to have to kill me first. And Aster says, I know watching that a second time. It's like. Wait, wait, wait.

[00:30:16] That was a bit prophetic, I guess, foreshadowing. So Aster shows coley the structure of the crystals that match your pendant. And coley is kind of dismissive. Yeah, I like the casual comfort between them. It shows these women do have an intimate

[00:30:31] relationship the way she just kind of waves, like put that away. I know what the pendant looks like. But it does like the fact that she's, I don't know, makes me wonder if coley is pretending here not to know things as well.

[00:30:44] I think she's much more of a liar than Aster in the end. I think you're probably right. Coley confronts Aster about keeping Halen's A wall status secret and coley says there's nothing lower than a deserter. But Aster defends him saying it's complicated and that they're connected

[00:30:59] by the rocks, him and her, which coley obviously loves to hear. But they toast to discovering the rocks. And then Aster shows her the lighthouse photo in the Gwibb Buzz and they start kissing. And now it's Halen's turn to interrupt. He's not happy.

[00:31:13] Coley has turned Bart's voice back on and he goes to bed while the other two go to bed. Yeah, I like I love them. I love I love Halen's reaction here because like he was so uncomfortable when he walks around the corner.

[00:31:28] Yeah, he's like such a genuine reaction of sorry, I'm just going to go. But I also I felt like betrayed on behalf of Halen. Like how dare you share this Gwibb Buzz with her? Yeah, because I assume he was just in the

[00:31:44] cupola for a nice evening with Buzz himself and all of a sudden you're walking on that. Yeah, like put a sock in the door at least. Come on. Exactly. But do you think so it seems like coley kind of thinks that Aster got her high

[00:31:58] together to agree to giving Halen a ride. Do you think that that's the case? I think it's a possibility. Yeah. But I mean, the thing is, I don't see why coley is so opposed to giving

[00:32:10] Halen a ride in the first place because if Halen ends up getting trapped on beacon 23, like how does that how does that advantage coley? How does that advantage the company? I mean, surely it makes more sense to give him a lift and pay him off.

[00:32:27] I mean, it's not like Halen has any particular or as far as we know, any particular ideology against QTA. So why not give him a ride? I don't understand. I mean, I guess she just doesn't want to deal with the extra complication and it's

[00:32:42] easier to just leave that to the QTA to deal with. Yeah, but it's the thing is if you leave him on the beacon, it's a loose end. If you give him a lift, you know where he's going.

[00:32:52] Well, I guess the idea was that she was going to have the QTA coming in any way to deal with whatever is going on because obviously they can't just leave the beacon on mandai there, I suppose. The whole thing with QTA, like the whole

[00:33:08] like I said before, the whole plan seems unnecessarily convoluted and complicated. Yeah, what seems like the core of whatever is going on with the rocks is is, you know, that's no there's more known by the QTA than it's known by the audience so far.

[00:33:23] So yes, I think we're going to be learning a lot more about the QTA in the last three episodes of the season. Yeah. But for now, things seem hunky dory between the three of them over breakfast. But Koli's doing some secret research via the QTA.

[00:33:37] And Esther, meanwhile, has a thought and checks the sleep pod she was in when Haleyn rescued her in episode one, despite harmony misgivings. She finds what she fears, those extra oxygen capsules, the requis planned and Esther was given extra oxygen to ensure her survival

[00:33:52] until she could be rescued. So. Oh yeah, by the way, some internet points. We got confirmation in this block of episodes of the QBITs that the records tried to steal in the last episode really are what's used to fuel the messages

[00:34:06] via the QT, so we were right about that. School. Well done, Alicia. Internet points. And we also see that they when we see actually Solomon doing an episode five. But when he's typing the symbols, like they use symbols to combine words

[00:34:24] so that they can use fewer symbols to transmit. But it kind of seems like they convert it to a language sort of like Kanji and Asian languages, you know what I mean? Yeah. So that's interesting. Yeah, smart way if you because it says right there like Max 25 characters.

[00:34:41] And yeah, this is also when I started to wonder if harmony belonged to the QTA or to Esther, which we unfortunately get confirmed as to the QTA in episode five. But I have the feeling that harmony feels loyal to Esther, but she's also

[00:34:55] bound to the interests of the QTA. What do you think? What do you think? Yeah, I think there might be a kind of Asimov thing going on here, which is, you know, that basically her loyalty to the QTA is like the cornerstone

[00:35:09] of her programming. So even if she is loyal to Esther, even if she wouldn't want to betray her to the QTA, she literally couldn't help herself. But I do wonder, you know, in terms of Asimov's laws, I don't think

[00:35:24] why don't they don't explicitly say anything about lying, but I don't think that they would support the amount of lying we see the AI do in this show. No, I'm more sort of meant that there is some sort of core to her program.

[00:35:37] No, I mean, impossible for her to not follow the QTA. Yeah, but I just wonder if it's if their programming is evolving and they might have more control over it than it seems themselves. Yeah, I think I'm with the Bart.

[00:35:52] I mean, yeah, I think I think there's stronger evidence for that with Bart than there is with Harmony at the moment. But yeah, I certainly think that's a possibility. OK. So yeah, at this point, Haley gets a ping from his ship, which has been out of

[00:36:08] range since Solomon disappeared with it. And yeah, I'm guessing we're going to hear more about that in episode six. Esther is oddly and curious about it and assures him he doesn't need a backup ride. She'll convince Koli and then she cooks dinner for the three of them.

[00:36:23] They get into their cups and the conversation starts to get ugly, mostly from Koli's end. They're reliving old missions and Koli casually drops it. Esther would disappear for days and bang other people. And she tells Halen, Esther will always let you down. Esther uses people.

[00:36:41] So yeah, Koli is not the person you invite to a dinner party. No, I mean, but she is saying something negative about Esther, but I'm still like feel defensive of Esther. Well, yeah, I mean, like, frankly, if frankly,

[00:36:54] if I was asked to and Koli did the things to me that she does to ask that, I'd be sleeping with other people as well. So you bought it on yourself. I have I still have questions after the end of this about their relationship.

[00:37:07] So I hope we do get more flashbacks with the two of them together. I would like to see what their relationship was like once upon a time. But she because she says that Esther was a small time

[00:37:16] mineralogist working for mining companies when Koli brought her into the QTA as partners and now she calls her street trash from Menelaos. So partners, but it seems now that Koli's her boss. So what happened there? Clearly Koli Koli was better at climbing the corporate ladder QTA.

[00:37:35] By the way, I love the idea of a small time mineralogist as if there is such a thing as a big time mineralogist. I mean, Solomon definitely wanted to be a big time mineralogist. OK, so vibe check rank.

[00:37:48] Haley and Aster and Koli on the Juliette to Simznard scale, which is a silo reference for anyone who doesn't like Koli is. Koli is right at one end. She's right on the Simznard end of the scale. Yeah, full Simznard. All Simznard Aster and Haley. I still don't know.

[00:38:05] Like I'd still put them right in the middle of the Simznard scale. Maybe I'd put Haley a bit further towards the Juliet end of the scale. OK, I think thinking about it. But yeah, I still don't know what Aster's full game is here. Yeah.

[00:38:24] And if you add in the two AI, where would you place them? Oh, Barton Barton is definitely towards the Simznard end of the scale. Like he's not as far as Koli, but he certainly he certainly towards the Simznard end of the scale. Harmony. That's an interesting one.

[00:38:44] Yeah, I think these episodes, I would have said I would have said like far to the left on the Juliet side to begin with, but now I don't know. Yeah, now I would still say towards the Juliet end, but she slipped. She's heading back towards the middle.

[00:38:59] She's heading back towards. I think you raised a very good point of how much of how much of what harmony is doing is free will. Because I think the whole point of the Simznard scale is you are doing this because you chose to do it.

[00:39:14] I think if you are like if you are being controlled and commanded, you're kind of off the Simznard scale. It's not fair to rank you on the Simznard scale. OK, fair, fair. Yeah, yeah, I guess maybe an intention. She's Juliet because I do think she cares about Aster.

[00:39:30] I do think so as much as an AI can. It seems like they've been together for a long time. Yeah. Well, yeah, Haley cuts Kohli off from the wine, too. So Kohli goes after him for the AWOL thing, asked him why?

[00:39:45] And Haley admits his memories of what happened are a blur. She says he saved himself and got his squad killed and flew around for four months. And now maybe he came here because he wanted to be caught. And she pulls up the report from the mission on DX113,

[00:40:02] which was his last mission, but Haley, he can't believe it. He's especially upset about the loss of corporate Lillia Gashad. Aster is upset with Kohli, who responds, it's time you saw each other for who you really are. So yeah, definitely jealousy induced, it seems.

[00:40:18] Now, Proto in the book, he does have a final mission. The story keeps revisiting and letting us find out more about. But it's it's a bit different from what we've seen here so far. And also the biggest difference is that in the book,

[00:40:30] he's a guilt-ridden hero who feels like he got accolades where he shouldn't have. Versus here, he's AWOL, where he feels like he is being judged where he shouldn't be. So it's kind of an inverse on that side. By the way, we also see if you freeze the screen,

[00:40:48] we can see that Haley was born on somewhere called Elger 2, whereas Proto was from good old fashioned Tennessee Earth. So we haven't heard any earth references yet, have we? No, but I did think I did think in the conversation earlier on in the conversation

[00:41:03] when Asta was talking about was talking about going into a casino and winning like a large amount of credits. There was a reference that was there was a deep face nine deep cut. There was a reference to Dabo only courted. Oh, right. Yeah. The second time.

[00:41:19] But yeah, there was a reference to Davo the game in Corks in Corksboro. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm going to be for the essay. Yeah, yeah, I say I've been doing too much marketing for the episode. Yeah, and now we know that there's a deep space nine writer.

[00:41:36] So that was definitely an Easter egg for the fans. Yeah. So now we've got Halen snapping at Aster and not even the Gwibbuzz is giving them good vibes now. He feels guilty. His squad died but says he's not going to get crushed by the wave like

[00:41:51] he speculates might have happened to the guy in the lighthouse photo. So this is the opposite of his suicidal feelings in the book at this point. And Koli informs Aster they're leaving immediately, even if they have to fly

[00:42:03] around in circles until the dark matter clears up enough for them to engage FTL, their version of hyper travel. Meanwhile, Halen snoops and spies and over here is Koli tell Aster the rock situation has been upgraded to C file.

[00:42:17] The rocks are going to be taken away from Aster. Halen steals a drive of sorts from Koli's bag as the women continue bickering. Koli is convinced Halen is after the rocks and Aster says, not intentionally at least, and Aster confronts her about her discovery

[00:42:34] of the extra oxygen canisters in the sleep pod. Koli finally fesses up. It was a setup so that Solomon would let Aster on board. Koli swears she was never in danger for a second. And Koli tells Aster that she knows Aster would have come anyway,

[00:42:48] even if she knew. Do you agree with that one? No. I'm sorry, I just I really took against Koli. Like I don't believe anything she says. But you don't think that Aster would have come, even if Aster knew that she

[00:43:03] had to do this risky thing about being in the pod and the blown up ship. Don't you think she would have come to the beacon anyway? Yeah, probably. Well, yeah, probably. So FTL travel, I'm thinking that stands for faster than light. Yeah, I think so.

[00:43:19] And Seafild classified, I guess. Yeah, maybe. So based on what we saw in episode five, do you think Solomon would have rescued Aster? Absolutely not. Even if it's like that clear, she's going to die. Yeah, absolutely. 100 percent.

[00:43:38] Now, I mean, talking about people on the Sims now at scale, like Solomon is so far at the Sims now and he might actually be off this. He might be off the scale. So you think he's worth the call? It's now the Julia to Solomon scale. Yeah.

[00:43:53] So if we were to make a beacon 23 version of the Julia to Sim snards scale and we put Solomon on that end, who are we putting on the Juliet? Well, that's the thing I don't mean we can, because I'm not sure if there is

[00:44:03] anybody we can put the Julia at the scale yet. Then we know. Yeah, OK. Bear. So it's now the Julia to Solomon scale and Coley puts a tranquilizer on Aster's skin, knocking her out, saying she would

[00:44:17] kill her if she was smart, but she just doesn't have the heart. And Aster staggers into the lab and Harmony gets the printer to print her something that helps her recover. We'll see more about how this works in episode four. But meanwhile, Halon is sneaking around downstairs.

[00:44:32] The drive looking thing he stole from Coley's bag is the key to her ship. But when he tries to use it to open the door, a voice says unauthorized and he gets a shock that knocks him out for a moment.

[00:44:42] Coley walks up, aims her gun, still saying jealous things about Aster, who comes up behind her and stabs her in the liver with the nano blade. She doesn't even think death is possible for a minute, demanding patches like this is something normal.

[00:44:56] But when no one moves to help, she knows she even calls out for Harmony, whatever her feelings about AI, but she doesn't answer either. And Aster takes Coley's head into her lap. We think she might be regretting her actions, but what looks like a tender

[00:45:10] embrace turns into her strangling Coley's neck in the cook of her elbow, her second kill ever. So Brutal, were you glad or horrified or both? Actually, this is probably that this is a this is a deeply inappropriate reaction, but what I was was amused.

[00:45:27] Because I thought the way she goes, you stabbed me in the liver. She's demanding patches as if like this is as if this is just an inconvenience. I think, yeah, there is a very dark humor to the show.

[00:45:38] Yeah, there's a very dark you stabbed me in the liver. Liver. She's just like, oh, come on, just get me a patch and let's just talk about this. I haven't got time for this. Yeah.

[00:45:51] Yeah, she must know her body rather well to know that it was the liver. Yeah. But yeah, apparently there is a high risk of hemorrhage if you're stabbed in the liver specifically. So it's a dangerous place to be stabbed because you're much more likely to bleed out.

[00:46:04] That makes sense. But yeah, this show is giving us like these tragic murders. Chick kills his mom in episode two. And now we've got Aster killing her girlfriends and obviously more to come. Yeah.

[00:46:17] So yeah, I mean, like I was just because there are a lot of bodies dropping in this show. Yeah. In this show. I do think I should like chicken as mom and coley. I think the script writers and the actors as an ensemble are doing a good

[00:46:32] job in establishing these characters and making you feel something when they die. Yeah. So they're not just, you know, they're not just a Star Trek red shirt. Yeah. The week they get eliminated. Yeah. It actually does mean something when these one episode characters come into

[00:46:49] this environment, experience it and then pass on. Even if my reaction to coley Aster was, yeah, God, God asked Aster stab her again. I didn't hate coley as much as you did, but they made me feel complicated feelings in that moment where I was.

[00:47:08] I was it felt like, yes, I want this to happen because coley's in the way of, you know, obviously I'm invested in Hale and Aster and whatever's going on with the rocks and coley was going to take away the rocks and, you know,

[00:47:20] is saying nasty things and all that. But I felt conflicted too. Like I can't believe that Aster could just kill someone who loved her like that because I do think coley loved her. See, that's the thing. I don't think coley did.

[00:47:33] But OK, we find out later that she had was carrying around a picture of her, you know, like real girlfriend stuff. No, I think I think coley was I think coley was a narcissist. I think she was I think I think this was a toxic relationship.

[00:47:49] And I think coley was being abusive towards Aster. So I think we just have a slightly different read on that relationship. Why I think I think it was a I think it was a toxic relationship. I think they both contributed to the toxicity,

[00:48:03] probably coley more at least in the end there. But I don't think that that means that she didn't love her in her way. Oh, we're going to have to agree to disagree on this. Well, I mean, we know one thing we know for a fact.

[00:48:15] Coley says I should kill you, but I can't. So and Aster obviously said I should kill you and I will. So that's there's there's a difference there. So yeah, so it's interesting to compare the death of coley that we just saw to

[00:48:31] the death of Scarlett, the book character that I said she reminds me of. And this death again is at the hands of the bounty killer in black in the book. So in the book, Scarlett and Proto, they've just want to fight and killed someone else.

[00:48:46] And then this happens. So again, from Proto's perspective, I sag against the wall exhausted. Scarlett tries to catch me. My shoulder screams out. My foot won't take any weight. Her hands are on me, her face so close, her lips familiar. My mind still stunned in racing.

[00:49:03] She starts to say something, starts to thank me, tell me she loves me, that we can end all wars, that we can make life, have children, move to sector one, be heroes together when her eyes widen in pain.

[00:49:16] And I see inside those windows into her soul and I see that she is a good person deep down just as the life leaves her. Just before her body sags into mine, nothing left to animate it. Stepping through the airlock is the bounty hunter in black.

[00:49:31] She has a whisper gun in her hand and it's pointed right at me. A woman I loved is in my arms dead. I'm next. I know this with all the certainty of gravity planet side. The bounty hunter walks to within a pace of me.

[00:49:43] I'm half pinned under Scarlett's weight and half pinned by my injuries. I can't move. I can't even resist. I wanted to be dead for so long that I opened my arms to the concept, to the idea of not existing. I want it.

[00:49:56] I feel my entire being open up to the cosmos, wanting all of it to pour inside me for the emptiness to fill me up, to burst me back into the atoms I'm made of, to be the tinsel and debris

[00:50:08] of that cargo all scattered through space, unknowing and unfeeling. The bounty hunter pulls the blaster from Scarlett's holster and flings it across the module. She grabs Scarlett by the collar and pulls her off me. The woman in black is fiercely strong.

[00:50:22] She keeps the whisper gun aimed at my head as she drags Scarlett across the deck and through the airlock. The door closes. I never heard her come. I barely hear her leave. A light goes from green to red above the door.

[00:50:35] Scarlett is gone and I haven't been arrested, haven't been killed and I'm angry as hell. So yeah, it's very interesting because in this case, it's not the person in the relationship doing the killing.

[00:50:49] And he says he sees goodness in her eyes in the end and is very sad about it. And yeah, we also get this sense of of a proto's depression that we don't get from Halen in the show.

[00:51:00] Do you miss that or do you say it's better this way? Are you glad that the show Halen is not suicidal or? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think it makes much more sense with the way they built the character that he wouldn't be. OK, why is that?

[00:51:17] Well, just because I think Halen, Halen in the show wants to get to the bottom of what's going on with him. He wants to understand why he's here and what brought him to this place. And that's what's motivating him.

[00:51:33] Not the he does feel guilty about the squad, but what keeps him going is why is he here in both the literal and existential sort of sense of that question? So for Halen, I think depression would be something that happened later,

[00:51:49] happened after he got answers to those questions. OK. And which death feels more tragic to you? Kohli's in the show or Scarlett's in the book? Oh, Scarlett's in the book, like I say. Just because you hate Kohli. I hate Kohli. Stubborn, Stubborn, Stubborn again. Ask the Stubborn again.

[00:52:07] Well, I have to say in the Scarlet in the book, there is their relationships complicated too. She's not. I don't think she's ever as mean to Proto as Kohli is to ask her, but she's not 100 percent saint either. OK. All right. Well, that's episode three.

[00:52:24] So moving on to episode four, which is titled God and the Machine. So God and the Machine sounds a lot like God from the machine, which Deus Ex Machina, which is a well known expression that's a plot device used

[00:52:41] when a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly solved by an unexpected and unlikely event. So I was contemplating, you know, what so this is Deus in Machina? What does this mean being the opposite? And I actually I googled the phrase just to see if it's been used before.

[00:53:01] And I got like papers and stories about the transsection of religion and machines or AI. So it's interesting to think about Milan throughout this episode from a religious angle, is he really pursuing? Is this a religious pursuit that he's after? He wants to become God.

[00:53:20] Well, yeah, that's true too. Yeah. But also just this idea that all humans should have a collective consciousness. So the director of this episode is Erskine Ford. And she worked as a second unit or assistant director on the expanse,

[00:53:38] as well as suits and 12 monkeys and orphan black and a bunch of other things, mostly sci-fi. And the writer is the writer is Matthew J. I'm going to try to get this last name. Well, Godney.

[00:53:51] And he worked as a script coordinator on the expanse and cabinet of curiosities. And this is his second writing credit credit after the short damage control. So he's one of the only two writers who's credited for only one episode this season.

[00:54:05] So it'll be interesting to look back at the end of the season and see how this and the next episodes stand out to try to understand like what is the flavor that these specific writers added to it?

[00:54:16] Yeah, I mean, first off, kudos, because if this is only your second ever complete script, well, yeah, second official credit on IMD for what that's worth. But yeah, bloody hell. That was that was some writing because this is a convoluted twisty episode.

[00:54:37] They're very, you know, philosophical in a way that I enjoy. Yeah, the rest of the episodes were written basically by the same four people credited in different combinations. So that shows to me that there's a through line in the story,

[00:54:50] even though the story might look a bit disjointed. I actually love the short story feeling about it because it kind of feels like the book in that way feels like a fever dream adds to that whole aspect of it and the unreliable narrators.

[00:55:03] But how are you feeling about that part? I mean, when it comes up, beacon 23 180 years ago, it's like, whoa, whoa. Whoa. Sorry, what? I got very excited when I saw that pop up. Yeah. Yeah, so 180 years before the story we've been watching so far,

[00:55:24] a man's named Milan Aleph, Aleph, Milan Aleph, played by Eric Lang, tries to enter beacon 23. He's nervous and keeps begging his AI hope. Voice uncredited. We'll get back to that for he's asking her for more drugs,

[00:55:39] but she says he's had enough for a while and he needs to learn to just deal with people. Yeah, like substance abuse is a real theme of this show. I mean, isolation and a lot of atypical people, neurologically speaking. Yeah. I mean, is it substance?

[00:55:57] Yeah, I guess he is trying to abuse it, but I do. I wonder where the drug is because it seems like it's an anxiety medication. Yeah, possibly. But yeah, he's clearly taking more of it than you should.

[00:56:07] Right. And if it hits that fast, then it's something like Valium, which isn't supposed to be taken long term. Yeah. But yeah, first Milan needs to talk his way onto the beacon past the skeptical beacon keeper Sophie Barber Hershey, a hippie-ish woman who

[00:56:22] likes a good Moo Moo and has filled the beacon with banners of cloth. She's woven herself much to Festidious Milan's ire. I loved this character of Sophie. Do you hope we see her again? Yeah, I really like Sophie. I really like the space hippie.

[00:56:36] And like, I know this is a minor detail, but like, how did she get the loom aboard the beacon? Was this like the loom in the point? I mean, if it's on her ship, she just carries it in.

[00:56:45] No, I just, I suppose, but I just had like the image of like Space Amazon. You know, no, I'm sure she probably brought it with her from home and her sons helped her set it up. No, I just prefer my idea of space. OK. Delivering packages.

[00:57:02] Space Amazon, they should have gotten that at the colonies. Yeah. Yeah, I'm guessing that they they don't. Yeah, any deliveries here need to be planned very well in advance. Yeah. But yeah, she makes the beacon look look homely. And yeah, she's a nice lady. Yeah.

[00:57:23] Yeah. And Milan, meanwhile, it's interesting to see his arc through this episode because at this point he's threatening to cut hope off and she asks, well, who will help you then?

[00:57:34] Which is a far cry from the just call me dad energy he's giving at the end of the episode. Yeah. By the way, the first time you saw I know it is the first time you saw Milan, did you go hang on a minute? Is that Paul Geomatic?

[00:57:46] Because that was like my first reaction was that guy looks really like I know I know both of the actors and I don't think they look anything alike personally, but OK. So I just watched Paul Geomatic. I just watched the holdovers last or the other night.

[00:58:01] And yeah, no, I don't think they look anything alike personally because no offense to Paul Geomatic, he's a brilliant actor, but I think there's something kind of attractive about Eric Lang. OK. This yeah, I don't know.

[00:58:14] I once tall and more handsome to me and just give me totally different vibes, the glasses. OK. I don't know where I was getting that from them, but I was getting serious Paul Geomatic vibes. OK. I guess maybe the he's being all curmudgeonly. That's very probably your medivac.

[00:58:31] Glasses and both. That's that's probably enough for me to be honest. So but yeah, Bart was still around even back then. And he's very much Sophie Surrogate's son at the start of the episode. They're both very attached to each other. Her real sons apparently are grown and out

[00:58:50] traveling the galaxies that they come to visit from time to time. And we get we meet Sophie first wrapped in a towel just about to get into the shower when Bart warns that an ISA maintenance vessel is approaching with a repair order. Sophie is immediately suspicious.

[00:59:05] She did not request a repair and she tells Bart to keep their visitor in the airlock while she gets dressed. Now, so this is before Bart gets his Shakespeare allocation lessons. Do you think he sounds different? No, not really.

[00:59:20] I mean, like and I can see why because I think the writers clearly wanted the audience to understand that it was Bart and not another AI, but like no, I didn't detect. I didn't detect any difference in how Bart was speaking, except that he sort

[00:59:37] of bought into the part of the Surrogate son. And I wonder whether that's like a thing with AI that they adopt the characteristics that are going to make them most comfortable. They're going to make the humans that are interacting with them most comfortable.

[00:59:53] I don't know. I only got that feeling. I only think that it's Bart who seems to have attachment stuff because hope and harmony don't neither of them seem to do that. I guess. But I mean, hope is hope is giving Milan exactly what he needs.

[01:00:08] I think harmony is probably doing the same to Asta. So I think the AI is obviously sophisticated enough to pick up on the social cues not part of the people they're interacting with. Not Bart, not with Solomon. He's never behaving the way Solomon wants him to.

[01:00:24] Yeah, again, I wonder with Bart's age whether this is like the AI version of sonality because because Bart is so so different from the other AI we encounter and Bart is so different in that timeline than the one we encounter here. Hmm. I mean, I don't know.

[01:00:44] I see a lot of Bart being very similar and it seems like like his attachment to Solomon later, I think is maybe born of his attachment to Sophie here. I would love to see him before this point.

[01:00:59] Like with when he was first turned on with the first beacon keeper and just I would love to see how the beacon keepers that we go through, how they contribute to what he becomes. And I thought it was really interesting

[01:01:13] is when Sophie's about to get in the shower, he sort of scolds her for not holding on to the handle. Right. But not because she won't be full. That concern like the way that Wade Boggart does that with his voice, that concern is genuine. Yeah, absolutely.

[01:01:31] Yeah, I don't know. I feel like the whole thing with the Shakespeare lessons is was just like Solomon being a dick to him and him not seeing it again. But I don't know. I wonder also he this whole thing where he says he's coming down with a fever.

[01:01:47] Like, is this play acting or like I thought they were speaking in code. How so? No, because this is just when they're alone. No, no, no, because he says he's coming down with a fever when Milan starts playing around with.

[01:02:01] No, this is just when they're alone that I'm talking about. It's before. OK, it's when Milan still docking. So I was wondering if Milan or hope might or the rocks might be messing with him or what, but like Sophie doesn't seem too concerned.

[01:02:15] So then I went back to is this some sort of play acting? Yeah, maybe. But yeah, when it comes to Milan, at least Sophie doesn't play games. She let to be known. She's suspicious, demanding documentation and explanations. And she finds those that he gives suspiciously well organized.

[01:02:32] And his explanation that there was a problem with an update and he has to install a patch and he didn't do it remotely because she was due for maintenance anyway. This smells like bullshit to her, but he's brought a gift

[01:02:45] because Beacon Keepers need to be celebrated more apparently. So yeah, this whole PS story was comedy gold for me. And I know Sophie wasn't buying a second of it. So why do you think she let him in?

[01:02:55] Well, because I think she realizes straight off the bat who it is. And it's kind of like, yeah, if you ever watch the show undercover boss or whatever. Right? I haven't watched it, but I know about it. Yeah, it's like, seriously, Milan, dude, we're a wig.

[01:03:10] Yeah, we're a fake mustache. Something you're the Bill Gates of the universe. Yeah, exactly. Of course, she's going to recognize you and who you are. So is Sophie, by the way, as a character, is she giving you like Earth Mother version of Martha from Silo Vibes?

[01:03:26] Yes. Yeah, no, a little bit, a little bit. But yeah, like Barbara, her she's performance, she's just emoting motherly energy all over the place. Yeah. And I love this detail that she's suspicious because the documentation is two together.

[01:03:41] It's too perfect and it shows the sloppiness of bureaucracy in her world. But it also adds an extra layer of realism to be honest. Yeah. So there's immediately more friction inside when Milan wants to talk to the AI.

[01:03:54] And Sophie tells him he can just run a manual diagnostic, even though that will take twice as long because the AI is resting. So yeah, the way Bart is with Sophie. Do you think that that's because of her that she trained him to be that way?

[01:04:09] Because he clearly didn't come out of the box that way if Milan's the person who programmed him. No, like I say, I think it's more like we the way I functions in this universe, they sort of adapt themselves.

[01:04:23] They bend themselves to what the human they're interacting with needs. And nobody else is doing that. Well, yeah, but I think hope is she's doing what she's doing. What needs him to do? Bart doesn't do that with Solomon. But he kind of does. Does he?

[01:04:40] Well, he lets Solomon like do the Shakespeare lessons and stuff. But yeah, I think I think. I think that because at least from the responses we see from Milan, he does not expect him to be behaving this way at all.

[01:04:56] So the person who programmed it did not put that in his programming. I don't know. I just got the sense that this is an AI working out the most efficient way, the best way to interact with the human they've been paired with. OK, I. OK, moving on. OK.

[01:05:18] So yeah, so we've got Bart's mommy and daddy here, and it's kind of an Oedipal situation in a way. So we've got like the killing of the father, the falling in love with the mother, even if it's not romantic love, it's somewhat obsessive.

[01:05:30] And Milan says he's an AI, not a child. And I know that. But out here, he's my world. So yeah, Milan is apparently getting ideas right now about AI being surrogate children. Sophie takes Milan to the central console and reluctantly leaves him alone

[01:05:46] while spying on him with Bart from the other room and hope says she can't get Bart to talk. Meanwhile, Sophie tells Bart she recognizes Milan as a CIO of QTA, questioning why he would want to pose as a common maintenance man to enter her

[01:06:00] beacon. And Bart says he didn't realize it was him. There must be something in his programming that prevents him from recognizing Milan. But he says that the maintenance that Milan's performing seems to be routine.

[01:06:12] And since Sophie has never had a single incident in her work, it can't be about that. Meanwhile, Milan is mumbling about safety hazards, tripping hazards, obstructed controls and screens with the long banners of cloth tied everywhere as decoration. He says to hope he can't breathe in this atmosphere.

[01:06:30] To Sophie, he says all done, ma'am. And she offers him tea, ground herself in her mortar and pestle. He scoffs at the work it takes to do things by hand. So, yeah, CIO, chief information officer. So this is a more tech based role than a CEO.

[01:06:45] And yeah, Milan anxiety disorder confirmed. Now it's interesting, Sophie says when Milan asks her about visitors, Sophie says Levi and I parted on good enough terms. So I guess Levi was her partner, her husband or whatever. I'm guessing, yeah.

[01:07:01] She says she took this job when the boys, her sons left the nest. So you're not a bad way to retire quiet life. You said you want to, you would like to live there. Yeah, I like that. And also like the whole Milan's thing about obstruction.

[01:07:15] It's somebody's home, man. Somebody's home. Yeah, exactly. She's not going to live in the cold metal. I mean, I guess Solomon later does to a certain extent, but Solomon has his own comfort too. And we find out that Milan has a daughter he's lost touch with.

[01:07:31] Sounds like hope was modeled after her. Yes, maybe I got the sense that that certainly hope uses her voice. I don't know that her personality was necessarily modeled after his daughter, but I did get the sense that hopes voice was modeled on his daughter.

[01:07:49] If Milan even has a good sense of her personality, his daughter. Yeah. But yeah, Milan takes this warm fuzzy moment to pull out a present from the small chest that he brought for her, a bonus, he says, for her hospitality. And when she demures, he says, he'll go.

[01:08:04] But then she starts to worry that she's being too rude. So she takes the present and opens it, also revealing that she knows who he is. He says he just wanted to see inside a beacon undercover. And we find inside the package a shimmery fabric.

[01:08:19] He says is woven from fibers from 100 different star systems. But when she picks it up, a neurotoxin seeps into her skin, knocking her out. And then he goes into man, baby mode and starts ripping down her cloth decorations.

[01:08:33] And I hope by the way, everything in this bacon is designed for utility. Yeah, it's a temper tantrum and hope gives him a hit of whatever it was he wanted earlier to calm him down. So yeah, very thoughtful, personalized gift, except

[01:08:51] you think it can be decontaminated of cloth? It seems like a waste. Yeah, it does. It does seem like a waste. This is why I didn't get the paperwork was too perfect, because she wouldn't need to know that the paperwork was too perfect.

[01:09:05] She recognized him, who he was from the start. So why did she didn't want to tell him that right away? I guess she called out something else she noticed there was off. Yeah. Yes, she says transparent. He goes a long way.

[01:09:18] So if he had just been honest from the get go, do you think Bart would have killed him in the end? Like if he had, if he had even just simply not knocked out his mom, do you think Bart would have not killed him?

[01:09:29] Yeah, because I don't think that's the reason why Bart kills him in the end. OK, yeah, we definitely that was definitely the worst Milan moment that you brought up him yelling about functionality while she passes out from

[01:09:39] his poison. But again, this is there's a lot of dark humor in this show. The first time I watched that, I did kind of giggle. Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, hope points out to Milan that he mentioned his daughter and he says

[01:09:55] he shouldn't have. So it seems like Sophie was already getting to him, getting him to open up more than usual. Yeah. And yeah, also Easter egg we see Halen's lighthouse picture, but it's framed and in the living quarters, not the GWB.

[01:10:09] So I guess this is the last thing of Sophie left in the beacon 180 years later. Well, I kind of like to think that they will open a door in one episode and they'll just be like rows and rows of serapes, you know, upon hangers.

[01:10:24] Yeah, maybe it seems like they haven't remodeled the bathroom or anything much. No. And like, yeah, I know it's in space. But yeah, the beacon, the beacon has remained remarkably consistent over the 180 years, you know, not had to remodel it, which is interesting.

[01:10:42] Yeah. I mean, I guess it also goes to show there's been a lot of comments about the ISA just not really caring so much about the beacon system and not paying attention to details. So I guess why would they remodel it? Hmm.

[01:10:55] Well, more than everything's still working after 180 years, more or less. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess they do do repairs and they did, for instance, replace that missing key. Yeah. But yeah, so Milan wakes Bart calling him by his full name Bartholomew

[01:11:11] and telling him I'm your real daddy. Milan wants information about some studies conducted by the first keeper on this beacon and he'll trade the antidote for Sophie for that information. Something visited Beacon 23 a few years ago.

[01:11:25] So this is why he was questioning Sophie about visitors when Sophie turned the conversation to their children, but Sophie, she's deleted some files. And when Milan scrolls back to the records of the first beacon keeper, they've all been erased.

[01:11:39] So we meant to understand that Sophie is a second beacon keeper. No, Sophie, I wrote down the list of beacon keepers. You ready? OK. So the first one is Ray Avalon, and I'm guessing we're going to hear that name again.

[01:11:53] I'm hoping that we might even see a flashback to this person. So after Ray was Theodore Akin, then Ruth Mooney, then Janet Sains, then Jose Mancara, then Evelyn Earl and then Sophie Arnazia. OK. So this this visit actually, even though we're 180 years in the past,

[01:12:14] this visit quite far away earlier. Yeah. Yeah. Well, but then he says it's somebody came by within the past few years. So that would be while Sophie was there. So yeah. So I guess it's a recurrence of whatever the first beacon keeper discovered. OK.

[01:12:31] And yeah, he says to Milan says to Bart, Sophie's life will cost you a few memories. So it sounds like he means to take the memories and erase them from Bart's hard drive so that he no longer has that info. Is that the sense you got?

[01:12:45] Yeah, that's what I took from that. We cut to Sophie on the floor and something is cooking up in the medical printer, looks like a giant larva, fleshy and jiggly, but then it splits open and a little flying robo snake zooms out, lands on Sophie's face and burrows

[01:13:00] up her nose, waking her up. Oh, this is. It was quite cool to see, but also, yes, very gnarly. Yeah, no, I don't like I don't like shots of things crawling up or crawling in orifices.

[01:13:14] And like this is a very, this is a very sort of old thing with me, because it's one of the earliest sci-fi memories I have is being shown the wrath of Khan as a little kid. And when you get the scene with the little worm things crawling in,

[01:13:27] check off the captain's ear in the space helmet. Yeah, completely. That completely wigged me out as a kid. Completely wigged me out as a kid. I've never liked the whole thing of stuff crawling up noses or ears or going in mounds and stuff. So yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[01:13:45] Yeah, I for me was more the jiggly larva stage that it's me out. So yeah, so this is going on while Milan is still interrogating Bart. So I guess Bart just kind of like guessed what the antidote was. Yeah, probably he just took a shot.

[01:14:01] Actually, I think he's very clever the way Bart does it because yeah, he was going to need to come up with a delivery system to get the antidote from point A to from the printer to Sophie.

[01:14:13] So printing it as that little book thing was really quite clever on Bart's part. Well, but I did wonder if that's just the natural system. Like I wondered if that was how we saw in episode three,

[01:14:22] Harmony woke up Aster and that or, you know, when Aster was given that trank somehow Harmony because Harmony can't physically touch Aster either. Yeah, Harmony. Yeah, it probably is the probably is the normal way that I do it.

[01:14:37] Because like you say, they couldn't carry the antidote from the printer to the person. So yeah, that would have to be the way they did it is invent the little bug thing. Yeah, icky, but cool. I like these little world building details in the show.

[01:14:50] So Bart asks if he should call ISA and I love Sophie's responses. You know, they won't do dick. But I'm sorry, just going back to the little bug thing for a second. I thought it was pretty strange that Sophie didn't sneeze.

[01:15:02] No, like there was no there was a little bit coughing, but she didn't this thing crawl right up her nose and she didn't sneeze. Yeah, I remember when so I have a pierced nose and I remember like I asked,

[01:15:15] will it hurt? And the woman piercing me said no, but you're going to cry. It's an involuntary response. She's right. It didn't hurt very much. But as soon as like the thing went through my nose, my eyes just start watering. OK.

[01:15:29] Yeah, I love that at this point Bart asks if he should call the ISA and Sophie responds, you know, they won't do dick. So it was a funny line, but also it shows that like even though this was 180 years ago,

[01:15:41] they were already not doing much and it seems like the problems only gotten worse since. Yeah. Meanwhile, Milan says to hope, thank you, dear. Where did you call me? Hope asks. I was thinking from now on, you could call me daddy, which ick, ick, ick.

[01:15:58] You, you, you, you. Even though that's not how we meant it, it still gave me the ick. Yeah. And then he says, yeah, I'm not right. Hit me again. She says, I can't. There's no more agent. You've gone through it. So now we've got the tiger fully unleashed.

[01:16:14] Yeah. And just then Sophie walks in and she's clutching the bundle of banners he ruined and she's like, dude, isn't it easier if you just talk to me? And he's all like, gosh, you don't get it. Nobody gets me. And she's like, you poisoned me.

[01:16:29] And he says, you'll be fine. She's like, who does that? I just the way they deliver all these lines is hilarious. I love them. He has some sort of big external device trying to recover all these deleted files

[01:16:41] and it begins to overheat to the point it's going to catch fire. And so if he's like, please don't burn down my house, dude. And he calls her the safety hazard. Yeah. And now she's in full mom mode.

[01:16:52] She's like, did you check the repair ship you came on? What do you need? He says, nice try. I'm not leaving. And she leaves him with a bundle of cloth and the instructions to clean up a mess he made while she fixes his device.

[01:17:05] And he does not do that. Vote your favorite bit between these two characters this episode. Just the overwhelming moment. Gee, did you check that? Yeah. Well, did you check that? Yeah, he calls her out on it later. He's like, you're your moming me.

[01:17:25] But then it kind of twists. But also I love the fact that Sophie didn't try to didn't try to attack him. Didn't try to hit him over the head even though he just brazen. Like, it tells you a lot about Sophie's character that she is constantly trying

[01:17:39] to engage this guy who came into her house unbidden and as far as she knows, tried to kill her. Yeah, absolutely. And Sophie asks him if this is about the artifact the first peaking keeper saw. And Milan says it's not a comet, the artifact.

[01:17:57] Maybe it's a vessel, an engine, an energy source. All he knows is it's the key to uniting human consciousness. He wants to find the missing data to try to track the artifacts movement so he can find it and to use it to conquer death, in quotes,

[01:18:13] eliminate our physical and mental limitations and synthesize with AI. It seems he means it seems like he wants us to become a hive mind. And the artifact is the event horizon between the physical and the metaphysical. I'm not sure he wants to become a hive mind.

[01:18:30] I just took it more as he wants human consciousness to be blended with AI to create something that can't die. Well, he says very explicitly that he wants to have a collective consciousness for humanity so that we're not individualized anymore. OK, I must have missed that one.

[01:18:50] OK. Yeah, which was I thought was very young in of him. Young is the... He was a protege of Freud who, well, they had a falling out, but he talked a lot about the collective unconsciousness, about this sort of shared consciousness of all humans.

[01:19:06] But that's in the background for us. And Milan wants to make it the foreground. He wants to make it what we are. Whether or not that's what he's going for. He's definitely what would be called a transhumanist,

[01:19:20] which is someone who thinks that we can shed our shells, our physical shells and our mental states can... Well, we can enhance our physical shells and then eventually move to a purely digital life where we can be immortal and be free of limitations.

[01:19:40] Did you watch the Russell T. Davies show years and years? No, I didn't. It's I've recommended it. It's about a lot of different things. But one of the plotlines is about one character who's a transhumanist.

[01:19:52] And I always have to think of that when I hear that term now. OK, so yeah. So the artifact is clearly where the rocks come from. And I think it's interesting he calls it a vessel because then later we see that there's actually like these little glowing spores.

[01:20:04] And so I guess like they're using the rocks indeed as a vessel to travel. Like maybe they attached themselves to a comet to as their way of having a spaceship to get around the galaxy. Yeah, maybe.

[01:20:17] And we learned that the QTA at this time anyway was all efficiency, productivity sounds like the opposite of the ISA. Sounds like the opposite of themselves 180 years later. Yeah. But I guess this is a comment about private versus government institutions

[01:20:35] where the QTA is the private and the ISA is the government. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I don't know that the ISA is quite as useless as everybody is saying it is. I think it's I think it's more that the beacon 23 is a long way

[01:20:50] out of the way, so it's kind of out of the outside mind kind of thing than built in efficiency. Well, it does seem like QTA is paying more attention to the speak and then ISA is, but I guess that's because QTA has a special interest. Yeah.

[01:21:06] And we find out, yeah, that the QTA is that's the entity behind space travel tech and they apparently have the ability to end world hunger. So seems like they are at least as powerful as a military.

[01:21:19] And maybe these are the two powers that keep each other in check? Possibly, I mean, I kind of took that as I don't think it's like they have the technology to end world hunger. I just took that as Sophie's saying, you know, Milan was rich enough to end

[01:21:33] world hunger if he wanted to if he wanted to be. And you know, that's there are people with whom that's true. When I was, yeah, I didn't necessarily read that as being a technical thing, just that he was extremely rich. OK, that's fair.

[01:21:48] OK, so his machine fixed while Milan waits for it to recover the lost data from the central computer, he and Sophie fight about their kids. Milan says his daughter didn't care and Sophie's kids aren't around anyway. So who is she to say anything about anyone else?

[01:22:04] And Sophie says Milan didn't try to get to know his daughter and her kids turned out great. I mean, like I got to be on Sophie's side in this and basically everything else. Right? Yeah, pretty much.

[01:22:17] I mean, I don't think the writers, you know, the writers deliberately set Sophie up to be the more sympathetic character. Yeah, yeah, true. Earth mother Martha, space mother Martha. Yeah. But I mean, you do sort of feel a bit sorry for Milan and that. Yeah, by the end.

[01:22:37] This instant defensive reaction that like clearly there's more that's gone on that you know, and we're probably never going to come back to it. But yeah. Yeah, no, he definitely what's nice about this episode is it peels back.

[01:22:56] You see basically who Sophie is right away and she stays pretty consistent. And there's also something admirable in that the way that she, you know, she preaches transparency and then she exercises it. But then Milan is kind of the more interesting character this episode because

[01:23:11] you see the layers being peeled off of him and you get to discover more who he is as it goes. Yeah. So while they're arguing over which of them is better at living life, Bart interrupts to say a supply ship has dropped out of FTL asking to resupply.

[01:23:27] But it's really just a ruse to get Sophie in the other room so Bart can propose suffocating Milan. He's done the math and Milan's plan is no bueno for humanity. He controls the QTA, Bart says it's only a matter of time before he controls the military to Milan.

[01:23:42] Aleph is an extinction event. He's got to go. So if he's concerned but she refuses to let him die, refuses to believe that Milan can't be reasoned with saying Bart will have to kill her as well. If that's what he really believes. So Bart backs off now.

[01:24:00] Yeah, Bart's hatred of Halen has got to be tied up in this, like seeing him as the intruder who came in and took his parent. Yeah, I think this is I think that's true. I think this is part suffering, some sort of intergenerational trauma.

[01:24:14] But what strikes me about this particular scene is Bart did the math awfully quickly. Yeah. Well, Sophie's not sure she believes him. Yeah, to work out all the possible scenarios. You know, he did that in what must have been a matter of minutes.

[01:24:30] So either Bart is lying or Bart is far more intelligent than we've been than we've been led to believe to this point. I mean, I think this is a genuine belief on Bart's part, but whether it's

[01:24:45] actually backed up by math, so whether it's just instinctive on his part, I think it's an open question. Yeah. So I think Sophie, she she calls his bluff when she says, well, you'll have to kill me too, if that's what you really believe.

[01:25:01] And she knows, I think she knows already that he's lying to her. But I do think that he he abstractly thinks it like the way a human would think. Like I've got to stop this before the worst thing happens. Yeah.

[01:25:13] And I mean, I've got to say I'm with Bart on this. You know, what Milana's proposal sounds pretty dystopian. Right. He's not just talking about transcending death like we say earlier on. He's talking about the fundamental we change in the nature of what it is to be human.

[01:25:29] Yeah. Oh, yeah. Solomon wouldn't like it with his foodie ways. Yeah. And so yeah, whether the maths work out or not, I'm with Bart on this one. Cut off the air supply. I don't. OK, OK, I disagree. I'm definitely much more the Sophie.

[01:25:46] I'm like, well, let's let's just try talking to him first. OK, let's just try talking. But yeah, she she calls Bart out on lying and I wonder who taught Bart to lie. I wonder if that's something he learned from watching or.

[01:25:58] Yeah, I don't think anybody taught him to lie. I think this is a skill Bart has picked up by himself. The way humans do. And all this was so sad. He says, what if I lose you, mom? And she says you will someday.

[01:26:11] And it's kind of ironic that even though it sounds distasteful because it's like you said, it's no longer really being human. Milan's plan would mean immortality in quotes for his mom. Yeah. And Wade Bogart is doing a really good job because

[01:26:28] voice acting is really hard because you don't have the full range of cues that an actor can normally work with. But the emotion he puts into what if I lose you, mom? Just oh. Yeah.

[01:26:42] And yeah, again, the way she's we've talked about it was a very motherly way of saying we've talked about. Yes, we've talked about this. Just like, you know, with a human child. Yeah. Like that Billy Joel song. Good night, my angel.

[01:27:00] Anyway, so yeah, I also keep thinking about your thought that harmony is a model, you know, rather than very like an individual AI per se. Yeah. And so it does make me wonder how different is each harmony and are they connected or separate? Yeah, it's an interesting.

[01:27:19] Because we've not we've not obviously we've not been on another beacon yet. So we don't know if there is another version of Bart on other beacons. I don't. Yeah, I mean, I guess we should assume that there is each beacon has an AI that

[01:27:32] helps run it like that. But I'm doubting we'll see other beacons. I think you don't see other beacons in the book and I doubt we will. OK, so Sophie marches back down to Milan and demonstrates what transparency looks

[01:27:46] like she tells him everything and Milan has touched that Sophie would sacrifice herself for him, but she points out is for her principles also. But he says he cannot give up his mission and he invites her to come with him.

[01:27:59] But she needs to stay for her boys, which probably includes Bart at this point. And she asks him to stay instead. He says the offer is more than he deserves, but he collects his things to go anyway. Yeah, I love this line also.

[01:28:14] Milan says, what are you doing here directing ships around dark matter? And Sophie says being a light in the dark. I've been thinking about that quote a lot. It's also funny, I watched right after I watched this episode for the first time.

[01:28:27] I watched a short film that was about a lighthouse that had like a similar theme. So it really filled into me. But I think that's beautiful. Yeah, it's a nice sentiment. So Milan says, I know I handled this all wrong, but I promise you my intentions are pure.

[01:28:42] Do you believe him? Do you think he thinks? I think I think he believes that. But I think so does every tyrant dictator in history. Just because your intentions are pure doesn't mean what you're about to do. Isn't incredibly evil and wrong.

[01:28:59] Do you wish that they'd gone together or stayed together? I mean, they weren't going to stay together because he wasn't going to stay. Yeah, Milan was set on his mission. Yeah, but she wasn't going to leave not for. Yeah, she wasn't going to leave her boys.

[01:29:15] I think also she also points out, you know, for something she doesn't really believe in like she doesn't want this outcome. She doesn't want him to succeed at this. Yeah, it's true. Do you think they would have been good for each other though that they could

[01:29:28] have? She would have even been good for Milan. I don't know whether he would have been good for her. I agree. She said, let's be a family with Bart. She said he listens to me. You'd be safe. Do you think Bart wouldn't have killed Milan if he stayed?

[01:29:43] I think Bart would have figured out a way to do it and make it look like an accident. So you think it's not about stopping him from the mission. It's about stopping him from taking mommy.

[01:29:53] I don't think Bart would ever have bought that Milan would have had given up. I don't think Bart would have ever would have ever believed that he wasn't going to resume the mission at some point. I guess he would have treated him the way he treats Helen.

[01:30:07] Halen on the current timeline. Well, Bart does kill him as soon as he's in the airlock. Bart traps him and sucks the air out, ignoring Sophie's crying and banging on the glass saying she'll thank him later.

[01:30:20] And on his knees gasping for air, Milan takes off his glasses and says, I see it and there are lights shimmering over the door of the airlock. Sophie's standing on the other side in the last moment before he loses consciousness. He says to hope, do it now.

[01:30:35] So you think Bart did the right thing? You kind of made that clear. Yeah, I mean, it's not the nicest thing to do. But I think this guy is what this guy is proposing is. I'm not sure I believe in heaven, but what he described is certainly a

[01:30:50] version of hell. So yeah, I think Bart did what needed to be done. I don't know if I can ever sign on for that. But I do like to think that if he had stayed, Bart would have at least let it go. But he was never going to.

[01:31:12] Yeah, I don't know what would have happened if he had been. I don't think Bart stopped him by killing him anyway. So yeah, possibly. Yeah, the episode leaves that somewhat ambiguous. Yeah. Any thoughts on the lights? The shimmering lights?

[01:31:30] That was I mean, maybe I just thought that was like the standard walking towards the lights kind of thing. I think Milan thought it was something else, but I don't think it actually was. I think it was just his brain being starved of oxygen. OK. That could be.

[01:31:47] I like to think that there is something more to it, probably something to do with the spores, but I don't know. They definitely leave that out. There's ambiguity there. Yeah. What do you think Hope did?

[01:31:59] So like there was no artifacts like he said that needed was needed for this transcendence, but I guess maybe this way was the backup plan. Yeah, I was thinking really hard about that. And I'm not sure what she did.

[01:32:15] Well, so I was saying, I guess this was way was maybe he's backup plan, like his personal backup rather than the full universal hive mind thing that he was going for. But where was the equipment to do all that?

[01:32:28] I don't I guess it was prepped in his bag or or Hope herself, wasn't it? Yeah, maybe. Anyway. So someone on Twitter, KGBT plus at Indiffer had an idea that they shared with me, they said, I have a feeling he found what he was looking for.

[01:32:47] It's the beacon himself, probably the artifact, some sort of comet or asteroid. And it's on a trajectory around the beacon. So I think the idea that it's on a trajectory around the beacon makes sense

[01:33:00] because that's why it keeps coming back and why Solomon is able to access it relatively easily. Yeah, you know what? You know what this this episode on the next one made me think of? It made me think of Solaris.

[01:33:13] Yes, I was going to bring up Solaris later, especially, especially with episode five. Yeah, but this episode as well made me think of Solaris because it seems like there is some sort of artifact that's interacting with the beacon in some way

[01:33:27] that's allowing, you know, allowing projections and allowing people to interact with their own with their own memories. Right. And you know, people people they know. So yeah, this episode on the following one really made me think of Solaris in a very good way, actually.

[01:33:40] Because I don't think that's a theme in sci-fi that gets explored as much as it should be. Yeah, I agree. That's a yes. That's a good point to put a pin in that. So to go back to what KGBT Plus was saying, they said, I think Milan's

[01:33:58] new state is somehow related to the hologram of Lena Headey's character. So they're saying that they think harmony is the same technology as what we see Aleph at the end when Milan comes back. Yeah, I mean, because he does that fade out thing, the harmony.

[01:34:15] Yeah, does where she just sort of blips out. So yes, that makes that makes sense. And I was wondering myself, it just kind of raised my hackles. I found it rather sus that there's no name credited to hope in this episode,

[01:34:31] like not even the end credits of the episode. That's great. Yeah, so I'm like, why would they be hiding that? And I'm wondering, so I took some clips of harmony speaking and hope speaking.

[01:34:43] And I want to compare them and see if you think that hope might be played by Natasha Mumba, the actor who plays Harmony. So the first clip is from it's a few things that Harmony said in episode three. And you hear it in two ways.

[01:34:56] You hear her normal voice that we usually hear her speak to to Aster. And then we hear a distorted version of her voice when she is talking to Bart, like inside the technology thing. And it's the distorted version that sounds more like the hope clip that I'll play

[01:35:13] right after that. OK, so here's Harmony. Aster. Mm hmm. Look at this. You're dreaming, Bart. You need to wake up. It's disorder. That's all. Bart, you're quoting Shakespeare. OK, and this is hope, which is like a more distorted version slightly pitched up from the distorted version of Harmony.

[01:35:38] Do your breathing exercises. You've had enough for today. I am helping you by not enabling you work on your people skills. You handled her admirably. Now he won't come out to play. What do you think? Yeah, I think that's Natasha Mumba.

[01:35:54] Yeah, I think there's a little there's a little bit of voice distortion there. But I think that's definitely the same person speaking. I mean, I hope maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it's just made me feel suss like,

[01:36:05] why would you not credit that character? That's odd. Yeah. So that kind of lends some credence to what KGBT plus is saying here. That maybe this is like an evolution. Yeah. And yeah, I think that's very interesting. I think that's a very interesting theory.

[01:36:21] Well, so but yeah, hope doesn't seem that sad that Milan is gone. Apologizing to Sophie and saying he lost his way. Bart says he had no choice, but Sophie doesn't acknowledge him. She realizes she's locked out of the controls and the key is gone from around her neck.

[01:36:38] Bart says Milan took it and it must have gone out to float with his body. Sophie finally speaks to Bart to tell him he ruined their happy home, reaching toward the poison cloth in her devastation. But she's interrupted when Milan shows up.

[01:36:51] The hybrid version who goes by his last name now. He still wants to offer Sophie a partnership, but she doesn't trust AI anymore. So Milan goes and she puts in earbuds, turns up the music and goes to work with her loom.

[01:37:05] Done with the AI, she had considered her son, ignoring his cries for her attention. So yeah, I wonder if there's like a big brouhaha at the time when Milan just went missing or do you think he just went

[01:37:17] back to QTA in this AI forum and pretend everything was cool and started the hunt that's going on for the Stones 180 years later? Yeah, no, I think he went back to QTA and sort of he's still... I don't think this is the last we've seen of him.

[01:37:32] I think we'll see him again this season, maybe not the actor. Maybe it's kind of a disembodied voice. But I think we'll interact with the character again. I'd like to think as well, Sophie and Bart reconcile at some point later on. Yeah, I know.

[01:37:52] I kind of want to see that. I kind of want to... I mean, I was just going to ask, do you think it's like this for the rest of her time there? Or... I hope. He still has to run the beacon. They have to communicate on that.

[01:38:02] Yeah, they have to talk to each other. And I hope. And also, I'd like to see with their other boys as well. I'd like them to all come to a visit. Yeah. That could be the Beacon 23 holiday special. Yeah.

[01:38:16] But yeah, I wonder if this is this coldness now from Sophie. If it does stick, if that's where he learned that a parental figure could be called to him and that's why he accepts it from Solomon later. Yeah, maybe.

[01:38:28] Well, so sad Bart, 180 years of a broken heart from because you killed mommy's potential boyfriend. I don't know. Data daddy. So what do you think Sophie did with his ship? Now, that is a very interesting question. I don't know because it's not there.

[01:38:47] 180 years later, so somebody removed it. I mean, I guess a lot of things could have happened. They replaced the key and. Yeah. I mean, I don't think Sophie would. I don't think she would hide it. Yeah, I guess but she did just float his body.

[01:39:02] Maybe she just let the ship drift off into space. Yeah, yeah, that would make sense. So Aleph said his evolution or maybe the AI took the ship. Yeah, that's that's possibility. He says his evolution has only just begun.

[01:39:19] And so I guess he's still pursuing the artifact probably up until today. The other thing that occurred to me watching that little bit is we get that line of dialogue from Astor in the first episode, you know, hundreds

[01:39:33] of years ago, we were just able to shoot information across space. Now we have to take it on ships. I wonder if that was the military or somebody else trying to disconnect Alice intelligence, trying to disconnect this artificial intelligence from the system. Yeah, because this is 180 years and

[01:39:56] Astor said at one point 200 years ago we could communicate without. But I do wonder if whatever all of this mystery is around this force and all that, if that is somehow connected to the reason why or whatever the war is

[01:40:10] about, I guess, how long has the war been going on? Yeah. Yeah, I just wonder if like if like Aleph did go back to GA, would they recognize him as as a person or would they think of him as an AI?

[01:40:24] Or would he register as some kind of computer virus? Yeah, indeed. Yeah, and we also learn, by the way, that only humans can see the artifact and not AI, so the irony. But didn't Harmony see the glowing rocks? Yeah, she did.

[01:40:41] So I like to think that's not a plot hole and then there's a reason. Yeah, either that is a massive plot hole or there is a reason for it. But yes, that did make me go home.

[01:40:53] Would you like to see more standalone episodes said at other points in the Beacons history like this with Bart as the through line? Yeah, I'd like to see more Beacon Keepers. And I'd like to see because also I'd like to see like the evolution of the

[01:41:06] Beacon because it is people's home. So like Sophie had it one way, Solomon had it one way. I like the way they're using the same set. But just by adding a little touches to it, they make it feel and look very different. Yeah, that's true.

[01:41:24] Yeah, I would love to see more Beacon Keepers also. So OK, we get to the last episode we're covering today and that is called Rocky. And the title obviously refers to the talking rock that shows up, which is a big nod to the book.

[01:41:38] This is actually the first character from the book in the show or the first name of a character from the book in the show. Are you surprised? Well, I mean, I just I just found this episode really incredibly funny. Yeah. I like a whole bunch of different.

[01:41:55] I mean, Stephen Root is just yeah, just killing it. Like I was I was in stitches with his performance. Yeah. So you were talking before about there being like certain types of Stephen Root that showed up.

[01:42:08] This is I was surprised when I saw like the type of person that he was, you know, with being the opera man and the and the makeup and the cooking and the details and the fastidiousness. That's not what I expected from the flashback that we saw.

[01:42:23] No, but Stephen Root is just one of those consummate character actors. He can play anything. Yeah, no, exactly. But you were saying there are certain type of Stephen Root characters. Did this end up being a different type of Stephen Root character than you thought

[01:42:36] I was? He was he's added another one to the pantheon of Stephen Root characters. Yeah. And I just just I love that. I love the little scream. I love the I must bathe. Yes, exactly. Yeah, the scream was the scream is burned into my head forever.

[01:42:55] And it always makes me go. Did some people had mixed reactions, especially non-book readers had mixed reactions to the Talking Rock thing. What were your thoughts? I actually quite like the Talking Rock thing.

[01:43:10] I think it makes it makes sense with the plots and it's also like they didn't try to explain why the rock is talking. It just is a talk rock. They didn't do like a Star Trek The Next Generation five minute info

[01:43:26] science dump on why they leave you to piece it together. Yeah, yeah. No, I really like this episode. I thought it I thought it it's sort of it's that perfect midseason episode where they've introduced the characters, they've introduced the basic mechanics of the

[01:43:48] story and now we're going to shift the tone a little bit. We're going to take this off in a slightly different direction now because we've got you the audience comfortable with where you are and who the protagonists

[01:43:59] are. So now we're going to throw you a little bit of a curveball just to keep it interesting. Right. Well, it does also feel like, OK, we've introduced all of the ingredients and now we're showing you how the

[01:44:11] recipe is made and I promise it's a promise that, you know, it leaves three more episodes to serve a finished dish. Yeah. You feel like, OK, I'm not the cooking metaphor is very appropriate. What can I say? Solomon's got me in a foodie moody. Yeah.

[01:44:30] So this episode was directed by Oz Scott, who also directed next week's episode. And yeah, he's got a lot of action and sci-fi background with like the Mr. and Mrs. Smith TV series Black Lightning, but also stuff like Chicago Med.

[01:44:48] So seems like he's gotten around in the directing world. The writers are Allison Moore, who was one of the writers for episode one. We talked about her then, but she also worked on episode six.

[01:44:59] So I'm expecting these two episodes to be connected with, you know, having a writer and director overlap. And the other writer in this episode is Dagny Atencio-Lupar. This is the other writer who is only credited for one episode this season.

[01:45:12] And she's written episodes for Sea, The Resort and a show called Strange Angel. So episode five picks up right after the Coley killing with Aster sitting there while Halen takes care of the body elsewhere. We think probably she's feeling conflicted, but what she feels conflicted about

[01:45:29] is that she doesn't actually feel sad. She was more affected by killing that wrecker than killing her girlfriend. I mean, like red flag or understandable? I think I think understandable. Like I say, the Coley hate goes strong. Yeah, the Coley hate goes really strong. I think understandable.

[01:45:48] I think also she's in shock to a certain extent as well. Yeah, she hasn't really sort of processed what's happened. Yeah, Harmony later accuses her of hiding her feelings. And I do wonder maybe if it's a bit of column A, a bit of column B.

[01:46:04] Like maybe she feels a relief and a freedom because of the toxicity of that relationship and the control, apparently position that Coley has gotten into over her, but it is odd that she's like the audience is more broken up.

[01:46:20] I'm more broken up about Coley's death than she is, it seems, on the surface. Stop her again. But I am glad she says she did it more for herself than for Halen, which, yeah. Yeah, which I think is true.

[01:46:33] That's the right reason to do it if you're going to do it, I guess. And yeah, when she finds that picture of herself and Coley's belonging, she calls it a bit weird, like, oh, shit, come on, that's your girlfriend.

[01:46:43] Do you think it's weird that she has a picture of you? Yeah, I would hope so. Harmony is in damage control mode thinking about what they'll say when the QTA shows up. They're about to find out a second team is on route since Coley hasn't checked in

[01:46:56] and the dark matter storm is nearly over in 14 more hours. Harmony proposes they say Aster killed Coley in self-defense after Coley got violent out of jealousy. So yeah, another example of AI lying, but there is a thread of truth to it.

[01:47:12] Yeah, it's not a complete lie, but it's not the complete truth. Right. Either. I'm like, this is the thing. I think I think the AI is trying to give the best spin on events possible rather than out now lying. So yeah, I thought that was interesting from Harmony.

[01:47:31] And like, Harmony seems genuinely panicked about what happened to Aster more than Aster is. Also, like, could they not just say that Coley never arrived? No, they know that Coley arrived. OK. But Aster says she's not going back to the QTA, which Harmony doesn't like,

[01:47:53] saying the QTA will hunt her down. And Harmony tells her to at least keep Coley suit because it's embedded with nerve rigs that automatically record the last actions of its wearer. So the QTA will see Coley was fighting

[01:48:08] Haleyne and they can use that to show she was in an aggressive state of mind. But this makes Aster realize that Haleyne's old suit from his last mission must also have recorded what happened with him. So now we know why they showed her noticing Haleyne's chest of clothes

[01:48:22] in a previous episode. I thought that was a nice bit of planting and payoff. Yeah, no, that's true. It's true because I definitely noticed it. I was like, well, why is she like all sniffing his clothes?

[01:48:32] Which I still don't know why she was what she was thinking then. But that's obviously why they showed it to us. Yeah. And they show us that Haleyne's busy repairing the broken glass from the records. So he's such a boy scout. Like this is literally not his job.

[01:48:48] I think, I don't know, I kind of want to put him on the Juliet end of the spectrum. The Juliet to Solomon spectrum. Yeah, I mean the Haleyne to Solomon spectrum. Yeah. So Haleyne hears videos from his suit playing and he joins in watching.

[01:49:02] Apparently Bart couldn't have helped Haleyne recover this data, even if he wanted to, because he doesn't have the right clearance. But it turns out that Astor does have ISA clearance. So now they have access to the data and he can see that his team, they were going right.

[01:49:17] But his friend Gashad, Bo Martinowska, she trips, which Haleyne says is the last thing that he remembers. But the video continues and shows Haleyne walking away from her and through an area where glowing blue spores are floating in the air,

[01:49:32] spewing out of a broken rock on the ground. And Haleyne is breathing those spores in. So I guess the ISA helmets don't filter the air. Clearly not. Haleyne's helmet wasn't working. But yeah, the sport of the I think what were they get? They're too small.

[01:49:50] Yeah, I think what we're supposed to understand is like the spores like temporarily sort of pitch the ride in Haleyne's body. Like they temporarily took control of them. Yeah. Yeah. Not even temporarily. It's still in there. But yeah, we don't see what happens after that.

[01:50:08] I wonder if we'll see more later because it is making me think of like the mission that Proto was on in the book, which was different and ended differently, as I said, but I wonder if they'll show that more happened after this encounter with the spores.

[01:50:26] But then again, the question is wouldn't that all be in the recording? So I don't know. So interesting that Astor really does have ISA clearance, I guess, from her days working for the mining companies? Yeah, or she stole it off somebody.

[01:50:38] But it's I felt like I feel like clearance is tied to her identity like under but if it's tied to her identity, like how often do they refresh the system? I mean, they keep telling us that ISA bureaucracy is shit.

[01:50:55] I guess you have to take it at face value. Is this like the is this like where you can read the economist? Because the university you were working at like seven years ago was never exactly your email address.

[01:51:08] But yeah, we do find out that the spores have lodged themselves in Halen's brain like a viral infection and taking control when they want to do something and directing him clear across the vastness of the space to the speaking.

[01:51:22] Yeah, later we see this model display of Halen's trip. What did you think of that effect? I thought that that effect was really good, actually. Yeah, I thought that was, you know, I'm justifiably criticized the effects in the show before,

[01:51:36] but I thought that one was really well done. Oh, and by the way, this is where I went, Internet points. So we both won serious internet points. Yeah, yeah. In the last three episodes, because it turns out Halen is suffering from the effects of something that's a virus.

[01:51:52] Yeah, that's something that's invaded him. Yeah, exactly. I messaged you before you saw the episode and I said, I think we both won Internet points for different things. We did, we both won Internet points.

[01:52:05] So as Halen and Astor scramble to leave, Astor intending to take the rocks with them, the visions start to flood back to Halen. He wakes up in the ground and thinks he hears Astor calling to him. But when he gets up to the cupola where the

[01:52:19] guibes, he finds Gashad dressed in plain clothes and the screen glitches to show he's tripping. It's the spores in his brain showing this to him. Gashad says she's here to help and she kisses him. She tells him there are important things he needs to do.

[01:52:34] He says he's listening. But when she tells him it comes out in an alien tongue, sounding something like Earth score, etes optinoi, which obviously sounds like gibberish to Halen. She blames him for not understanding, saying he's not listening.

[01:52:49] The sports seem to have activated in a panic about Halen and Astor leaving and taking the samples from this place. Is that your read? Yeah, they don't want them to leave.

[01:52:59] Is it that they don't want them to leave or they don't want them to leave with the rocks? I mean, I think they went to such lengths to get at least Halen there, if not also Astor, that they probably don't want him to leave.

[01:53:11] Yeah, I think that's probably right. But I think you can read it both ways. But yeah, I think what you've just said is probably the right way to read it. I can imagine from their perspective, we finally got everybody in the right place. Nobody's going anywhere.

[01:53:27] We finally wrangled them from across the universe. Oh, shit, they want to leave. Yeah. No use today. So by the way, the character from the book Scarlet I Talked About, who I thought Koli was kind of based on,

[01:53:41] the Gashad character is the other character that I thought got part of her story. So again, it's an ex that who he served with, like Scarlet from the book. And in the book, she was sent to him with a message.

[01:53:54] And here, the Aliens for us seemed to be using the memory of her to get his attention, to get him to listen to a message. Whatever, yeah. Yeah. And this is where this is where I was thinking a lot about Solaris.

[01:54:08] For anyone who doesn't know, Solaris is a famous sci-fi novel by Stanislaw Lem that's been made into a couple of movies. And it's basically about a I'm not sure that the movies portray this quite as much as the book, but it's basically about a sentient planet.

[01:54:26] And this planet can form beings from like the foam of its seas. And it ends up creating people from the memories of the people who are on the station, who are studying it and sending it to

[01:54:44] to get its way to talk to them to play on their emotions. And that's exactly what it feels like is happening here. Yeah. I mean, I've only seen the most recent film version, the George Clooney version.

[01:54:56] So I haven't read the book and I haven't seen the earlier movie from the 70s, but I've seen the George Clooney and Natasha McKellen movie. And yeah, like the way that's not just the content of the scene,

[01:55:08] but the way that scene was staged very much reminded me of that film. And it's interesting, they're also like Gashad says, I've never seen the side of Orion before. So they're like mixing up his memories of Aster and Gashad.

[01:55:21] Yeah. Sort of blending them, getting them a little confused. And also I thought the way she says the last thought I had before I died was he must have left us for a reason. So it sounds like the spores reassuring him, like, don't feel bad.

[01:55:34] You were doing our work. Yeah. I wonder how much of that is the spores? Like because how much are they just like using Gashad's image as a hologram? And how much are they actually using Halen's memories of her? So is that what Halen thinks she would have thought?

[01:55:55] Or is that why Halen wants to hear, I guess, is the question you're asking? Well, I think that it's what they want Halen to hear. You know, because they're like, no, don't feel bad about doing what we want you to do.

[01:56:10] It was a good thing to listen to us. Yeah. But it's not like Halen seemed to have much choice in the matter. No, no, exactly. But I think they're trying to make him feel better about it. Yeah.

[01:56:21] So Halen tries to snap out of it with some cold water when he hears a new voice, a gruff male voice. Rocky, the talking rock has entered the building. Rocky claims to know Halen that they've been through things together. Their brothers in arms.

[01:56:36] He was there with Halen and Gashad, he says, says to hear Gashad out. He's been around a long time. He knows things. This does not help Halen's feelings of confusion. So what do you think of Rocky? I like Rocky.

[01:56:50] Like I say, I like when they do things like this, it's always better to say it's a talking rock. Deal with it. It just is a talking rock. You don't need to understand why it's a talking rock, particularly beyond something to do with the spores.

[01:57:07] Yeah, I need to know at this point. So what I think is going on is that the spores have like a sort of hive mind. And since they're infested in Halen's brain, they can, you know, talk to each other, the spores and the rock and the spores

[01:57:22] in his brain. Yeah. But yeah, they've indeed at least been together for months now crossing the galaxy. And if they are this hive mind, it explains why Milan thought that they could help him do the same for human consciousness. Yes, that makes sense.

[01:57:36] Yeah, that's actually, yeah, I hadn't thought of that. But that does tie these two episodes together quite nicely. So I mentioned in the last episode that Proto from the book he saved someone, but it wasn't Aster who doesn't exist in the book.

[01:57:51] The person he saved is actually Rocky. So he gets a sign of life from outside and he brings it in and he finds a wooden box with a hole in it and a rock inside. And so this is also when I did the reading about the lighthouse picture

[01:58:09] in last episode, and I said he was sitting with another character. That character was also Rocky. But to step back, this was the first meeting between Proto and Rocky in the book. So that's when I hear the scratching noise coming from the box,

[01:58:24] sitting on the airlock bench and a small voice that does not seem to be coming from inside my head, picking up the box. I turn it to find the clasp. And again, I hear something move inside.

[01:58:34] I feel the clunk of something heavy hitting one wall of the box. I feel it vibrate slightly in my hand. The lid pops open. The thing inside shifts again. And I hear someone say, Jesus Christ, on a popsicle stick took your goddamn time.

[01:58:49] There is a rock inside the box. I look at the rock. I feel like the rock is looking at me. The rock shifts position ever so slightly. What it asks? Hello, I say. Yeah, hello. What the hell took you so long? I was dying in here.

[01:59:05] You're a rock, I tell the rock. The fuck I am. I set the box back on the bench and rest on my heels, peering at the little thing. It's gray with deep pockets of black little fissures and cracks and pockmarks.

[01:59:19] One of the black spots is deep and might be an eye. I've gone through countless flashcards of alien life from the army and NASA, and I've forgotten most of what I had to memorize to get through the tests. But I know there are shitloads of creatures

[01:59:33] that camouflage themselves either to not get stepped on or to kill the fuck out of those who would step too close to them. Yet I've never seen a creature that looks so much like a rock. What are you? I ask.

[01:59:46] Well, since you're obviously human, you'd call me an orbit. And since your accent places you from earth, you'd obviously not give a fuck what I call myself in my own tongue. So why bother? You're a foul mouth thing, I say.

[01:59:58] This is me shrugging like I give a shit. The rock tells me. So I won't say anything more about Rocky because I don't know what elements from that story they might be using. But just to point out, yeah, this is one of the most book accurate things

[02:00:10] in the show. So I love the phrase to kill the fuck out of it. Yeah, yeah. That is that is a good phrase. How do you think that this Rocky compares to show Rocky so far? Well, the show Rocky is obviously a lot less profane.

[02:00:25] But other than that, I think probably a ratings thing. Yeah, I think they're I think they're pretty close approximation of one another. Yeah, I think he's got the personality right. But book Rocky gets some funnier lines than we've gotten.

[02:00:38] Although we got we got some zingers about thick skin and stuff from show Rocky. Yeah, but you and Abby, I follow you both on Twitter. You were very excited with the prospect of the prospect of Rocky.

[02:00:53] So is this something that's going to be discussed in the next book club? Oh, well, we already we did the Beacon 23 breakdown in the book club. So OK. So yes, we discuss this. It's yeah, Rocky is a fan favorite from people from the book.

[02:01:08] And by the end of the show, at the very least, I'll be able to tell you Rocky's whole story how he plays in because I see that they are taking elements of it in terms of the role he plays in Halen questioning what's going on with his mind,

[02:01:23] which is different with these with this like viral infestation. But I don't it links a lot with with with things going on with Proto's mind in the book. One difference though is book Rocky doesn't have any glowing spores on him.

[02:01:38] And another bigger difference, I think, is that in the book, Proto meets Rocky while he's still alone. So this is the first companion he has in the book, whereas here, you know, he's already got some friends around him. So it's a slightly different situation.

[02:01:53] And also, of course, on the book, there's no larger plot of glowing rock beings or whatever. But yeah, it does seem to play a similar role with a brain virus twist. So Rocky says it's all about the rocks and that Astor knows and harmony.

[02:02:07] I guess fake harmony pops up saying she's in the cupola and Halen sees her floating outside and in a panic he goes out after her. The real harmony warns the real Astor who safely inside that Bart has opened the bay doors on Halen's request, he insists.

[02:02:22] And Astor ends up saving him. So why do you think the spores would make Halen go outside like that? I don't know. Like to try and retrieve the because this is why I think the feedback we got about the artifact maybe being something that orbits the beacon

[02:02:40] makes a lot of sense because maybe it's about recovering the artifact. But surely they would know that Halen would need a ship in order to do that or at least a space suit. Well, they yeah, Rocky makes a comment later about humans being so fragile.

[02:02:56] So maybe they don't know that one. Yeah, maybe they just learn. Yeah. So yeah, once Halen's back inside, he tells Astor about his hallucinations and she's like, yeah, talking rock makes sense because they're clearly trying to tell us something.

[02:03:11] But Harmony is like, nah, Halen's just messed up and you need to save your own ass with the QTA. Astor still wants to go. Harmony is still not happy about it. And she's trying every angle together to stay with QTA, like saying the QTA

[02:03:24] is the only chance for Halen to set things right with the ISA. She tells us that the spores are activating the amygdala, which is the like fear center in the brain, the brain's fight or flight center. So it would make Halen feel more panicked and anxious.

[02:03:40] And when Astor starts taking away Bart's permissions, angry about him opening the bay door, knowing Halen would hurt himself, Bart finally coughs up the video of what happened to Solomon, the real keeper of the beacon.

[02:03:53] And this is almost like a mini episode within an episode, this whole Solomon thing. I forgot for a while that we were watching like a flashback. Yeah, it's really well done. I had a lot of fun with this. Yeah, indeed.

[02:04:06] Yeah, so Solomon was collecting and cataloging the samples from the rocks when Halen showed up out of oxygen, interrupting his life of science, gourmet cooking and opera listening. Despite Bart's urging, Solomon demands Halen be denied docking privileges.

[02:04:21] And then Halen surprises Solomon in his bedroom as he's getting out of the shower and we get that hilarious screen Steven Roode in my head forever. I have to say, first of all, I do not do my makeup and nails when I'm home alone.

[02:04:35] So more respect to him. It just shows later how much he's fallen when he's just like a mess. And so the samples were from somewhere nearby, obviously. But I'm getting whiplash on Bart's behavior during this part because it starts out with Bart wanting to save Halen and stop.

[02:04:54] Solomon was the one who was going to let him die. Then later, he's wanting to kill him. So this is why I'm so suspicious of what's going on with Bart. Yeah, I mean, I think the obvious reading is that Bart kind of does blame

[02:05:09] Halen for Solomon's death completely and just defiantly like, it was a complete accident. But I think Bart, it's almost like survivor guilt. It's almost like Bart couldn't save Solomon and so he needs to go somewhere with that emotionally and the thing he latches on to is Halen.

[02:05:30] Yeah, OK. Yeah, because Solomon barely tolerates Bart, definitely doesn't trust him. Not letting him see all the data he's collecting. I guess Bart, it's easier for Bart to blame Halen than to accept that Solomon didn't love him the way he loved him.

[02:05:46] Yeah, because there's this thing where Solomon goes for Halen's ship and Bart downloads a version of himself to the ship. And it's like, take me with you, take me with you. Don't want me to come with you.

[02:05:59] And Solomon's just booking it out of there like he couldn't care less what happens to Bart. And I think that causes Bart quite a bit of trauma as well. Yeah, exactly. So now that Halen's in the beacon, Solomon's like,

[02:06:16] OK, here's some nice food and Halen's like actually tastes like shit and dumps a ton of that fancy soy sauce, the one we both agreed with the last condiment last step all over it. Yeah, and the soy sauce is delivered.

[02:06:29] It's like special soy sauce has been fermented especially for Solomon. So they do get deliveries. There may not be a space Amazon, but there is a space meal kit service. I mean, probably not that regular delivery space delivery. But yeah, but then I love it.

[02:06:50] It's like Solomon is describing all this really fancy flouncy food he's made for Halen and they would sit down with a boatload of soy sauce. And he says it tastes like shit without the soy sauce. Oh, man. I can see why. Halen is like Solomon's worst nightmare.

[02:07:13] Yeah, I mean, the way Stephen Root played Solomon didn't remind you of all of Dr. Smith from Lost in Space. OK. If you ever see if you ever seen the 50s version? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[02:07:26] Yeah, and the environment which reminded me of the way that the actor in that played Dr. Smith, OK, that kind of hyper camp posh, OK, slightly effeminate villain. All right. So but then while Halen sleeps, Solomon tries to send a distress message out on the QT,

[02:07:48] but Halen catches him and takes the key ring from him and Halen is the captain now. So first of all, there are clearly extra mattresses because we see when Halen chains people up, he gives them a freaking mattress. But Solomon has Halen sleeping on the couch. Yeah.

[02:08:06] Yeah. So we actually going back to the last episode, Milan was wrong that the beacons aren't all about functionality. Like they are a living space as well. I assume like the extra bedding is for when the beacon keepers swap over.

[02:08:25] They don't just like one arrives and the old one leaves. Yeah. There's like a transition for it. So I assume that's why there's the extra space. I mean, the TV show version of the beacon is so big and luxurious compared to what

[02:08:40] I pictured reading the book, like just the whole spiral staircase thing and all that. OK. But yeah, later there's another distress signal and Bart says there are two incoming ships that will be forced to come out of FTL if the beacon isn't turned

[02:08:53] back on costing them precious time that could be dangerous in the case of the supply ship, Bart or Bartholomew as he's insisting helps Halen turn it back on despite Solomon's protests. So this is when Halen locks Solomon up with the ankle shackle in the corner,

[02:09:09] so to speak, the beacon is cylindrical, but you know what I mean? Off to the side. But now I'm more confused about the sequence of events with a crash in episode one, because if the ship was already out of FTL, then how did they crash into dark matter?

[02:09:24] Because I thought that that was something that. Yeah. Yeah. No, I didn't I didn't get that either. And I think that I think that's more like we two have just been a plot hole. Yeah, it's hard to explain that one. Yeah, a few mechanics of episode one.

[02:09:38] OK, that's yeah, I'm willing to forgive it because I like you. And you won't. Yeah, I picked that up as well. So I don't think that either of us being overly persnickety. I think that is that is a plot hole.

[02:09:53] Oh, well, I mean, if it's just episode one with a couple plot holes, I can forgive it because I'm enjoying the rest of the show. Yeah, I noticed also that Bart, we always talk about Bart is the murder bot,

[02:10:03] which he is, of course, but he's less murderous than Solomon a lot of the time. Well, I mean, the thing is it's not that Solomon is murderous. Solomon is just so wrapped up in his own little world that he just doesn't.

[02:10:15] I think to be honest, Solomon is probably an example of somebody who has been living on a beacon for far too long and has gone. I'm not saying he's gone insane or anything, but I think like it's

[02:10:28] dulled the sense of empathy to the point where he just doesn't see anything outside of himself anymore. OK, yeah. So then we get this sense that some time has passed, but Halon refuses to kill Solomon, but he also can't set him free. Solomon looks like a wreck.

[02:10:45] He's given up on his Solomon-ness and Bart has completely turned on Halon. So I guess Bart maybe he just couldn't watch Solomon suffer like this. You know, because you see Solomon is just he looks a wreck. He's not even asking for clean bedding anymore.

[02:11:01] Yeah, don't give this turnkey anymore of your time. I love that little line from Bart. It's just like all the concern and also it's clearly like that. He's, you know, he's using this sort of very high-flow formulation. It's the Shakespeare that Solomon's been teaching him. Yeah, exactly true.

[02:11:22] I guess he words things differently now since he's training than he did with Sophie. So yeah, of course, Solomon named the rock Solomonium. He's just all about his legacy. That's what he does. The only thing he cares about is being the big big time mineralogist.

[02:11:39] Yeah, he won't even let Bart catalog his findings because he doesn't want to share credit. Yeah, I don't know. There's something about this intelligence about this extensive distrust of Bart. So Solomon, he throws a book and when it hits the spores in the rock, it knocks Halen out.

[02:11:56] So Solomon can drag Halen closer and take the key ring and unlock himself. Bart has quickly prepped his data files for him, but is pleased for Solomon to take him with him or at least a copy of him are completely ignored.

[02:12:11] Halen comes to points out to Bart that the ship doesn't have oxygen, but Bart's calls to Solomon are also ignored. Bart blames Halen says Solomon was too scared of him to think straight. Says he'll make Halen's life a living hell.

[02:12:25] And this is when Halen turns Bart's voice off for the first time. Do you feel sad for Bart? I do, I do. He's in the space of two episodes. He's lost his mum, his dad and his voice. Yeah, 180 years in between. But yeah, 80 years in between.

[02:12:41] It's like the worst country song of all time. Oh, do you think Solomon's actually dead? If he's not, I don't know how he survived. Because there's no, unless there is a space suit on that ship.

[02:12:55] Or yeah, or what if it wasn't really out of oxygen, but the spores just made Halen think that so that he would seek to dock there. Yeah, but Bart also agrees that it's out of oxygen.

[02:13:10] But what if that's, but yeah, I guess he's computing directly at the ship computers. Hmm, yeah. I don't know, I just feel like he's still alive. But also just because I never trust a character that dies off screen.

[02:13:22] Like I was expecting I kind of expected the ship to blow up in the distance because it happened with a different character in the book. So I thought that's what we were going to see. But no, it just disappears. So OK, I don't know.

[02:13:33] Well, let's hope he's not dead because I could always do more Stephen. Right. Yeah. Let's bring him back and maybe maybe actually Bart will kill him ultimately. Now, that really would be Shakespeare. Yeah, that's true because they kept bringing up his Hamlet.

[02:13:47] He was quoting. Yeah, it was Hamlet. Yeah. Interesting. So Astor walks off in a huff knowing the truth and Bart is afraid that Halen will be exonerated not only for killing Solomon, but for war crimes. Harmony as usual is like what the fuck is wrong with you, dude?

[02:14:02] What is with your over emotional obsessions? By the way, yes, he says she says to him, you know, it's entirely possible that Halen could be declared a hero. So I feel like that was a book nod to the fact that Proto in the book is a hero.

[02:14:15] I don't know. I mean, maybe it was a book. Now, I just thought Harmony was flat out trolling. But yeah, she's like, I'm done with your shit, Bart. Yeah, Harmony, there's no need for that. Now, Astor is trying to convince Halen that with the evidence of the viral

[02:14:33] brain infection, the QTA will help him. She seems to have lost faith in their connection. The whole mission Astor has. I don't get why she took this out of what she saw. Do you like why does what she saw from this story with Solomon change her mind

[02:14:49] about her insult and no, it doesn't. This is the thing like I can't work out whether this is poor writing. Or whether this is stuff we should have picked up on. Haven't well, I don't think it's either. I think it's just that maybe this is because

[02:15:11] maybe Astor, you can see she just distances herself from people she gets too close to. So maybe she's looking for an excuse to do that. Yeah, well, this is why I said at the beginning of the podcast,

[02:15:21] I feel like I could do with more of an exposition dump. Because like there's stuff like this where I can't work out. Is this like you say, is this an aspect of Astor's character? Is this a plot hole?

[02:15:35] Is there something I should have picked up on but didn't or something they're going to explain next episode or further down the road? Like, like, isn't it fun to speculate? Isn't it fun?

[02:15:47] Like if they gave us all the answers now, what would we do the rest of the season? Well, that's true. We would make the podcast a lot less fun. But I just feel like I could do with a firm of footing on stuff like this

[02:15:58] because I feel it's sort of distracting from the main story, which is what's going on with the artifact and the rocks. I don't know. I think the main but it is a it's part of the main story. But Halon and Astor are the main story.

[02:16:15] And the rocks are a vehicle through which to tell it their connection via the rock. So I think it's it is the main. I guess. But yeah, I'm wondering though, should I be thinking worse of Halon than I do?

[02:16:26] Like I for me, I don't think he's done anything wrong. No, I mean, even when he locked Solomon up, I get it. But I don't know what was he going to do? I mean, I'm not sure what else he was supposed to do with Solomon at that point.

[02:16:43] Yeah. Yeah, like Solomon's inadvertent commerce death is clearly an accident. No, having seen what happened with Solomon, I don't think any worse of Halon than I did before. Yeah. So Harmony reminds Astor that if she leaves the QTA, Harmony can't go with her. She belongs to the QTA.

[02:17:03] She tries one last angle. Doesn't the work give you a sense of purpose? She asks Astor and Astor Dermures and Harmony seems to finally accept that she's leaving. Why do I have the feeling that Harmony won't consider herself property of the

[02:17:17] QTA for long? Do you think she might break away or do you think she might betray Astor? I don't think she would want to betray Astor. Uh-huh. But like I said earlier on in the show,

[02:17:30] I think there might be some part of Harmony's program that makes her incapable of not betraying Astor. You see what I mean? That basically she's hardwired to do what the QTA tells her in some sense.

[02:17:43] I did like the line, I hope your next person is less than that, quite so much of an asshole. And Harmony's like easily issued. Definitely won't be annoying. It's annoying as well. So we cut to another Halon vision, visuals layered over each other to convey the dreamy state.

[02:18:02] He talks to Rocky who tries to light a fire under his ass to do what? He doesn't make it clear yet, but fake Harmony joins the hallucination questioning what Halon thinks he saw on his brain scan. So then they bring up something called the intelligence rights concord of 100

[02:18:18] years ago, so 80 years after what we saw Aleph do. And this apparently settled the debate of if AI were real people. So we know that Harmony also brings up, you know, she has rights as an AI, but it doesn't include leaving the QTA.

[02:18:37] So I'm very curious where this rights issue comes from. Yeah. We don't know whether this concord said that they were people or said that they weren't people or said something in it seems from context that it probably said something in between. Right, exactly.

[02:18:53] Leaning toward they have rights of some sort, but not the same as humans, I guess. Yeah. So that also explains why they can disobey when they want to, to a certain extent. So it's funny that Milan said that he said that

[02:19:10] AIs were not people, you know, like he said Bart is not a child. But then he wanted to become one and what of him now? Yeah. And it's interesting also that all the dream people say they're here to help to

[02:19:22] Haley, so if we hear someone say I'm here to help, we should also see that as a red flag, isn't what we think. So this time Harmony whispers what they're trying to tell him in Haley's ear. And this time he seems to understand.

[02:19:36] He says it sounds like a terrible idea. And fake harmony says Aster needs this. So Haley wakes in his bed next to Rocky, who urges him to do the thing. And Haley climbs into the antenna room where the rocks are stored and he opens

[02:19:50] the top to let the antenna out, the one that hasn't been used in a hundred years. And the rocks follow and the barrage of rocks tear off the docking bay and coley ship. So I guess they really don't want them to leave.

[02:20:00] And as Haley and Aster run up to the cupola to watch, we see the glowing rocks fly into the space outside the beacon, swirling and mingling, forming a swirling mass around a glowing light. Aster grabs Haley's hand, assuring him and says, I've seen this before.

[02:20:16] It's real as we hear memories of children laughing. And I guess the QTIC sees this too, because according to Harmony, they're arriving now. So Rocky and the other rocks, the silicate disaster calls them. They're real, it seems. But it's the spores that are intelligent, not the rocks themselves.

[02:20:34] So Haley can hear them because they're in his head. What is that? How you read it also? Yeah, that's how I read it. The rocks are just what the spores have sort of glommed on to as to give them

[02:20:48] sort of corporeal form and to give them a vessel through which to travel. But I do wonder like the first spores that Haley found, why were they so far away and why didn't these spores infect someone

[02:21:02] closer? Why Haley and why they're in that place in time to cross the universe? Presumably because presumably because they only exist in those two places. Or but also there must have been a colony near Menelaus where Astor grew up.

[02:21:18] Oh, yeah. She says she says that she's seen this before. Hmm. Good point. Yeah, I've seen this and we hear memories of children laughing when she when she says that. We'll have to stick a pin in that and come back to that.

[02:21:34] In future episodes, because I don't have a good theory on what would have caused that. But yeah, if there was a colony closer to being 23 than Haley, you would have thought they would have used it because Haley had to travel a hell

[02:21:46] of a long way to get right eight point bit. But maybe they need to be here for some reason. I don't know. Yeah, I guess we'll find out. And yeah, Harmony wonders if they'll send someone named Salis from QTA.

[02:21:58] So that's a name to look out for next episode. I actually didn't look to see if there is someone. Are you excited for episode six? Yeah, I mean, I think we're sort of we sort of clearly moving towards the business end of the season.

[02:22:11] And I think episodes, episodes four and five in particular told us a lot. And, you know, sort of really fleshed out the extended universe of Beacon 23 by going back 180 years. Yeah, you know, it feels like we're moving towards the climax of the season. Yeah, I agree.

[02:22:33] Well, OK, we'll be back with our final thoughts and community chatter. We're going to hear what other people are thinking right now after this quick break. The Quantum Tunneler has new messages. OK, so starting with Discord and yeah, if you want to talk about Beacon 23

[02:22:52] and or Silo or anything else we cover in a bunch of other stuff, we're on the Lorhounds Discord. You'll find the link in the show notes. Love to hear what you think there. Subzero, they are said, OK, I'm all caught up on the three episodes

[02:23:06] that this was sent after episode three. A few people sent feedback after each episode. So he says lost my wife after episode two. She's out. She watches a lot of sci-fi, but she's not a hardcore nerd like us. So OK, it's interesting.

[02:23:20] Overall, I think I'm in the not blown away but intrigued enough to keep watching camp when you have such a confined space and small cast. The solo or two to three person scenes really need to pop. And I'm not getting that on a consistent basis.

[02:23:34] I think individually, Heady and James are doing fine, but I'm not quite sold in their relationship dynamic yet. What do you think, Luke? I think the thing is the relationship dynamic isn't stable. It's evolving. These are people that have only just met each other.

[02:23:51] And they're still trying to they're still trying to work out. This is going to work out who the other person is. Yeah, yeah. So I think I get what the commenter is saying, but I think there is good reason for that.

[02:24:06] And that is that neither of them are on like emotionally stable ground at the moment. And that gets worse by having all the by having the records come in and by having Koli come in and I think that this is still a this is still a relationship

[02:24:22] that's in the process of formation. Yeah, and so it is going to be a bit inconsistent. Yeah, I like the chemistry between the actors. So I'm invested in how this relationship is developing. I'm also I'm pro romance, but I usually am. So no, I don't think so.

[02:24:41] I think this is going to end up like being like really deep platonic friendship rather than romance. There definitely seems to be some physical chemistry, but we'll see. So Sub-Zero continues, there was also some jerky editing abrupt cuts between scenes

[02:24:57] where I've had to rewind to make sure I didn't miss anything. I think that normally bothers me, but I think in this case it's kind of done on purpose just to add to that disjointed dreamlike state where you know, we don't really know who or what to believe.

[02:25:13] Yeah. Hailing contrast is our head. I think it's I think it's like film making shorthand for messing with people's reality. Yeah. And Sub-Zero continues that said I am still in for the series. I'm intrigued by the premise and look forward to where it leads.

[02:25:28] I'm really digging the hailing character. And then after episode four, just saw episode four last night and I'm thoroughly confused as to what the show runners are trying to accomplish. I hope episode five will shed some light on why episode four exists at all.

[02:25:42] Or if not, I'm sure Alicia will explain on the pod. That said, I've enjoyed watching episode four as a standalone episode. I'm just not sure the approach was a good creative choice for the season as a whole. I thought that Barbara Hershey was excellent.

[02:25:55] It was just a definitely a bold choice to completely go away from the main cast for an entire episode. And I'm not sure I understood what they were trying to tell me other than Bart is a murderous AI, which I already surmised from the prior episodes.

[02:26:09] Maybe I missed something completely. What do you think, Luke? I think it was telling us about the artifact. Yeah. As well. And I think it was telling us that, you know, Beacon 23 has been at the the center of mystery for a very long time. Yeah.

[02:26:27] This may be this without knowing it, this may be like the center point of the galaxy, this may be like the this is not just a beacon. This is this is sort of sitting on top of maybe the ultimate secret

[02:26:43] of human consciousness and or the secret of whether or not humans are alone in the universe, because we still don't know who this war is being fought against. Is it humans fighting humans or is it humans fighting aliens? It seems like,

[02:26:59] let me say the show runners aren't particularly interested in that. But I think one of the ways this could go is this could be like a first contact situation. And I think that would play out quite.

[02:27:12] I think that would be an interesting way for it to play out. Yeah, I mean, I think if it's if you like it as a standalone episode, that's already a success. And I don't I do think it ties into the overarching story because of yeah,

[02:27:28] because of the information it gives about it's planting the seeds, not only of BART, but of the role of AI in this world. And I do think we're going to see Milan come back and also everything with the artifact.

[02:27:41] And yeah, I think it adds a lot of information, but I also think it's just worthy even if it is its own thing. I think we we obsess too much about things being tied together a lot, which I like it's satisfying.

[02:27:53] Maybe how the advantage of the book of expecting a more loose episodic narrative. Yeah. So for Lisa says episode three was better, but there was so much going on. I need to rewatch towards the end. I got lost.

[02:28:07] Definitely have to pay more attention and not the easiest to follow. I'm still sticking with it, though. I just figured out the beacons are to help detect dark matter. And then episode four loved Barbara Hershey. I think it shows the state of the corporations, institutions who created

[02:28:24] the beacon and how far humanity and AI has evolved, even though we still have the same problems. Or maybe it's just a BART backstory. She shouldn't have treated him like a person or son. It was kind of creepy, both of the protagonist's relationships with their

[02:28:39] respective AI. So, yeah, fair point, fair point about the creepy relationships. And yeah, I agree. I think absolutely it's about it is a BART backstory, but also about how the institutions who created the beacons, yeah, how it all operates and the evolution of AI in general.

[02:28:57] I mean, the thing is with the dynamic of the beacon keeper and the artificial intelligence, it's inevitable that the beacon keeper is going to treat the AI as as human. I mean, maybe not in that kind of familial relationship, but the AI is

[02:29:15] the entity that the beacon keeper gets to speak to most often. It's inevitable that they're going to it's the nature of being a beacon keeper, being a light housekeeper, that it's a lonely profession.

[02:29:27] And so it's kind of inevitable that they're going to treat the AI as being partly human. Yeah, right. Right. Well, it's like, you know, the way we treat pets like children, but then also in the same way, you know, I'm an animal rights person, vegetarian.

[02:29:45] I like why maybe we should treat animals more like human. And maybe yeah, with AI, if the AI have the personalities and seem to experience emotions like we see at least part doing, they should have rights.

[02:29:57] Well, I find myself, I occasionally catch myself saying please and thank you to my A L E X A, which is mine. Mine thanks me for thanking her all the time. OK, so yeah, maybe it's not even that far fetched.

[02:30:14] No, and I think it's also good that, you know, also the way you interact with AI even once as not. I mean, obviously our Alexas are not as well evolved as the AI we're talking about in the show by hundreds of years.

[02:30:30] But even still, when you treat AI with courtesy, you're just getting in better habits of being courteous in the way that you deal with. But I do kind of agree with the feedback that treating it as a son, maybe taking that a little bit right now.

[02:30:46] It felt creepy, especially like I said with the call me daddy. But but I have to agree that Sophie was also a little bit at times like, OK, take it down a notch. And so, for at least to continue is this episode was about episode five.

[02:31:01] This episode was a trip, but I'm not connecting the dots. Stephen Roots is always fun. But what am I missing? I thought the footage of Halen and his crew that Lena Headey was watching was somewhat revealing. Looks like Halen got exposed here,

[02:31:14] gassed by the Blue Rocks, which might have caused him to go psychotic. But I didn't see any reveal at the end with Halen's dealings with Solomon other than they didn't get along. I mean, yeah, no, he didn't go like psychotic, but he was more like

[02:31:29] the gap, the fungal for possessing for a little bit. Right. Right. Yeah. So he has a break in his memory because they just were like, and we're going this way now. So I wonder how much he's going to remember next episode about letting them

[02:31:44] out or if they like, if he now can remember and have them control him at the same time. Yeah, that would be that would be interesting. Yeah. But yeah, the reveal with Solomon at the end is that Halen didn't kill Solomon.

[02:32:00] I don't even I'm not convinced Solomon's dead. Like I said, nobody, no death. This is the lesson I've learned from television. We'll see. Yeah. So on Twitter, Mark at Markall84 just checked in after episode three to say

[02:32:17] this is a great show so far and Stu at Dove 71 said, so myself and the good lady watched episodes one and two of Beacon 23 last night. Color me intrigued. I enjoyed the setup, plenty of questions popping up.

[02:32:33] I picked them on what seemed a throwaway comment about how 200 years ago humanity was using some other form of FTL and they've had to go back to their current mode of interstellar transport. I imagine I thought it was about the communication, but what I thought it was

[02:32:47] about the communication. Yeah. I imagine that's how the Beacons came about. World building seems to be slow and steady, so a good Hugh Howie trait coming through in production and definitely keeping my intention. So I think Stu has I know Stu's red silo.

[02:33:03] Stu, you have to let me know if you've read the Beacon 23 book. I'm not sure. So episode two was a bit of an overused trope diehard in space. But again, I think maybe not hasn't read the book because it feels like a section

[02:33:17] of the book, but again, was used to unearth a bit more of the background and development of the protagonist. I think my only wrinkle so far was a bit of a head spin on Halon wanting to get

[02:33:27] off the Beacon so forcefully than to then wanting to stay and protect Aster. OK, hope this motivation will be explored more in coming episodes. I haven't even mentioned the glowing rocks that seemed to trigger trauma and Halon.

[02:33:41] Great to have you and Luke back in the saddle together on a Hugh Howie mystery box. And it's great to be it's great to be here. And he said, oh, and loved Luke bumping on Lena Headey's accent. It's actually pretty close to her natural speaking voice.

[02:33:55] She is proper northern and I love hearing diverse British accents on US shows. Let's US viewers know we don't all speak other down to Naby or Cockney. But I'll take your word for that. I found it really weird. Anyway, moving swiftly.

[02:34:12] Well, we talked about how she was born on Bermuda but grew up in Yorkshire. However, people pointed out that she often has like a more southern or, you know, yeah, I think that's probably also from from working as an actress. You develop a more neutral accent

[02:34:30] and working probably a lot in the US, of course. I was trying to look this up. And I actually found out she she used to date Jerome Flynn, she used to date Broton from Game of Thrones,

[02:34:42] which was a bit awkward when they were working together because they were not dating at that point. So it's just a bit weird. She also used to date Pedro Pascal, who was also in Game of Thrones. Yeah, I think she did as well. She's a beautiful woman.

[02:34:55] I'm not surprised. Well, I mean, I guess if you work in that field, you're used to it. Yeah. So Stu rode in again after episode three. Well, did not see that as being the ending to episode three is in terms of the

[02:35:11] Koli death. This does seem to be laying out some interesting mysteries. Still none the wiser in the glowing rocks, but there must be something deeper going on as to explain Astor doing in her partner of 10 years. Does she know more than she is letting on?

[02:35:26] So which is interesting because I notice that Rocky told Halen to ask Astor that she knows things and Halen didn't ask Astor, but she has teased it like there's a story behind her necklace. So hopefully now that she said that she's seen this whole formation

[02:35:43] in the space thing before with the rocks, hopefully next episode we're getting some Astor backstory. Hopefully, yeah. So Stu says starting to see more coherent flashbacks of Halen's time serving, still need to know who they are at war with.

[02:35:59] And once again, to use Luke's terminology, everyone was just tripping balls in this episode. Harm and Bart ship is the wholesome rom-com we need in this series. So after episode four, Stu says the intrigue continues. This beacon has a storied history.

[02:36:16] I noted the use of the term ally or adversary when she was asking about the incoming ship. Does this mean the war has been going on for hundreds of years? This is what I'm wondering too. Yeah, that's a good point.

[02:36:26] There is obviously a connection between the artifact and the glowing rocks. Is this why the company is so interested in the beacon in the present? Yes, I'm thinking so. The glowing rocks are the artifact or they're taken from it like it's a common of sorts.

[02:36:41] Bart is giving Chopper a run for his money in terms of being a homicide, a little AI, which yes, absolutely, and has been around for a long time. If we assume it's the same iteration of the AI we see in the present,

[02:36:54] I think so because the personality seems pretty consistent. Yeah, I think everything they've told you so far, did you believe it is the same AI? Yeah, we also now have another little mystery. Where is the Ascendant Intelligence? Where did it go? Yeah, exactly.

[02:37:12] This was a great little episode like a play and it was acted and produced excellently. It's definitely holding the attention beyond just the mysteries unfolding, but I'm hoping we get some answers or at least pointers to getting a better idea of where this is going.

[02:37:26] And then his response after episode five is very simple. Aliens, smile face. And Bart's still a homicidal little bugger. I would say that they are doing a good job of answering questions, moving the mystery on a bit and keeping us dangling.

[02:37:42] So a thumbs up for beacon 23, hard eyes, Moshi. So thank you, Stu. It's always good to have your feedback. We also got feedback from my friend Precious, her royal bubbliness, who is a JDI underscore. She said, I've seen episode three of beacon 23 with no spoilers.

[02:37:58] I think I'm being drawn in now. So yeah, she was skeptical after the first two because this tension that keeps brewing in such a claustrophobic space had me internally screaming throughout. I'm curious to see where it goes.

[02:38:10] And then after episode four, she says my favorite episode so far probably should have been titled Being Human. Hurt people finding some solace connection in this deeply lonely world, whether that's with the connection or humans and heartbreaks are unfortunately not exempted from the deal.

[02:38:27] A quiet, deeply moving episode when he died with her desperately banging on the door, begging her son, I had to stop what I was doing and just reflect. I was so deeply sad. Funny how he wasn't very likable at the beginning and I was sad about his passing

[02:38:43] and a reminder to humans to appreciate the simple things of life in the fast moving world of tech we are in, which was reinforced by how she lived and how she shut out her son in the end. Yep. Absolutely.

[02:38:58] And then our last bit of feedback comes from Abby, who said, yeah, the episode title Rocky tickles my intention, side eye emoji. And then responding to the question I said about whether I thought that the AI might play the role that the animal cricket plays in the book.

[02:39:15] She says transferring cricket to AI would make me sad for the loss, which I get, but I also wonder if they're going to have a CGI animal on this show in terms of budgeting. Hmm. I'm wondering. Columny intrigued.

[02:39:30] But I'm wondering if like they are doing the rocks with the spores because they can tie it with Rocky, which is from the books. But also it's much cheaper to have blowing rocks and say that sentient life than have the other types of sentient

[02:39:45] life we see in the book. So Abby says, after watching episodes four and five of Beacon 23, I'm left thinking that whoever wrote the script for this had read the expanse and it read the Expans series and Beacon 23 and thought, let me mash them up.

[02:40:00] So yeah, we did point out that there's definitely people from the expanse working on this show, so you're not wrong. She says episode four had again some old man war vibes with a consciousness transfer talk. At least there is Rocky kind of.

[02:40:14] Well, I love the Expans very much. But I kind of wish for this to be its own thing, not a constant reminder of another show. It sounds a bit like a complaint, but I still like what I am seeing, intriguing story and still looks good.

[02:40:26] At least no one who read the book is spoiled by any of the plot. LOL. Yeah. Which makes you happy, right, Luke? It does. Yeah. It does. It's nice to be on an even kid and even playing with you occasionally, Alicia.

[02:40:42] So yeah, so next up we're going to combine the breakdown of episode six and seven, which are called Beacon 23 and N transmission, suitably vague titles. Any predictions, Luke? I don't like the sound of N transmission. That sounds rather ominous. Yeah, true.

[02:41:00] Yeah, I would love if episode six is a flashback to the why. I want the answers from from Astor, of course, but I also want to flashback to the beginnings of the Beacon and the first Beacon Keeper Ray Avalon. So I hope that's coming. That would be cool.

[02:41:15] What do you hope we see before the end of the season? I I hope that we see, like you say, a bit more of Astor's backstory. I hope that we have a bit more of a sense of what the artifact is

[02:41:33] and the relationship between the artifact and the the spores. I'm not saying that that needs to be entirely explained, but I'd like I'd like that part of the story to move forward a bit. I'd also like to see maybe even the building of the Beacon because I wonder

[02:41:53] I wonder whether this was just built as an ordinary Beacon that then happened to find unusual stuff or was the Beacon always cover for like a larger experiment or a larger recovery operation? I mean, I guess the Beacons are all over the place.

[02:42:13] I from I tend to think coincidence. No, but that was kind of a point is if you wanted to if you wanted to cover up a I see an experiment, you would put it in the middle of something that's scattered everywhere that's perfectly normal.

[02:42:29] But if Milan didn't do it or if someone from QTA didn't do it, why? So you think the ISA would have, I don't know. I'm not getting the sense that the ISA is that organized, but I guess it could be a ruse or it could have changed.

[02:42:43] Maybe we'll see. So if there's a cliffhanger at the end of the season, what do you think it might be about? It's going to be either one of Asta or Halon. Like it's going to be asking one of them to save the other,

[02:42:56] but I don't know which way around that would be. OK. OK. Do you think either of them might die this season? Possibly, possibly. I mean, or it could be like equally could also be a fight for control of the Beacon between Harmony and Bart.

[02:43:14] But I don't think all four of them are going to get out of the season. Oh, yeah. I guess so. OK. Well, yeah, I look forward to we're going to be talking about that in two weeks.

[02:43:24] Just FYI, I promise to do a novel breakdown before the end of the year, but just realizing that it's going to be happening in January. It's just too packed with work leading up to the holidays. But then you will get in January,

[02:43:40] the novel breakdown with the ranking of the most iconic scenes based on the feedback collected and January and February, we're going to be releasing Dune content almost weekly. We're going to be covering Hodorowski's Dune, the documentary. We're going to be talking about the 1984 David Lynch version,

[02:43:58] the sci-fi version from 2000, part one from Villeneuve and previewing part two before the release of the movie on March 1st. And then, of course, talking about that movie once it comes out. And a few other things after that.

[02:44:13] For now, you can catch up with the intro episode of all about Frank Herbert's life and how and why this story was created and what we'll be covering in that series. And do we want to talk about the holiday special? Yes, there will be the holiday special,

[02:44:28] which we're putting together now and releasing while we're on holidays. It's the it's a wonderful life slash knife multiverse of movies. So, Luke, you watched the you watched It's a Wonderful Life for the first time and we won't get into it too much here.

[02:44:45] But it wasn't what you expected. No, I've never watched It's a Wonderful Life. It's always passed me by. And I was talking to Will, who I do one of the other podcasts with. It could be said, and it was his argument that

[02:44:58] it's a wonderful life is more of an Americanism. Mm, fair. Which is possible. Yeah, we're not getting to it, but it wasn't what I was expecting. Let's put it that way. Well, I can't wait to talk to you about it.

[02:45:10] And there's also so we're we're watching talking about It's a Wonderful Life. But then we're also going to touch on a bunch of other like remakes of it just to talk about how an adaptation of an adaptation, what happens with that?

[02:45:26] So I'm watching the 1970s version this weekend. For anyone who wants to watch along the movies that we're going to be talking about is It's a Wonderful Life, of course. I will be watching the sequel to It's kind of Clarence, which is supposed to be

[02:45:42] a terrible movie. And I told Luke not to bother with it, but I'm just going to watch it and mention it. And then the other the remakes of It's a Wonderful Life we have from 1977. It happened one Christmas from 2013. The Christmas Spirit.

[02:45:59] It's a Hallmark film. Oh, you're welcome. We have the It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas movie from 2002. And then from this year we have It's a Wonderful Knife, a horror spin. It'll be fun too.

[02:46:16] And yeah, I think, Luke, once you once you see like how these movies are playing with the alternate reality formula, you're going to be seeing this everywhere after it. It's a Wonderful Life again. Yeah. And also so the book club.

[02:46:30] We again, you can if you want to listen to the breakdown of Beacon 23 of the book, what happens there that is covered in the book club. Link in the show notes and coming up this month is the breakdown of Shift, the second book in the Silo series.

[02:46:46] And yeah, we'll be covering Wool and the Silo stories in January and then continuing with our rewatch episodes of Silo. But for the winter holidays, we do have another winter holiday special coming out, be an audio drama of the short story, the greatest gift.

[02:47:03] Doing this again with the Jedi Jedi Bob. So sign up there if you want to hear that before we do our whole talk about it. That's the short story that It's a Wonderful Life is based on. And also want to thank New Silo's in Elena B.

[02:47:18] Look forward to talking to you about everything going on in the book club. You can find Luke and I on Twitter to share your thoughts on Beacon 23 or anything else we're covering. You can find me at Alicia C. B.

[02:47:30] Also on other social media, including Blue Sky, which I'd like to be transitioning over to, but I'll admit I'm still on Twitter more. Luke, what about you? Yep. So you can find me at Luke Middop on Twitter. And also I do another podcast called It Could Be Said.

[02:47:48] We talk about British politics, international politics and occasional sport. We have taken a little bit of a break because I've been very busy marking essays and both of my co-hosts also have jobs that get pretty busy around this time of year.

[02:48:05] So I think we're hopefully going to record something at the weekend. But yeah, we are around. We've just had to take a bit of a break. And yes, you can also, as I said, find us on Discord link in the show notes.

[02:48:18] And you can email any feedback to woolshiftdustpodcast at gmail.com. So any feedback you have for the episodes or just thoughts in general, things you want us to know. And if you're enjoying the podcast, please do share it with other people you know,

[02:48:36] other people who might be watching Beacon23, who are wondering what exactly is going on, we can help them sort that out. And if you're enjoying the show yourself, then please leave a five star rating wherever you're listening. That really does help us get more listeners.

[02:48:52] And it's deeply, deeply appreciated. Read all the reviews and it's very thankful to those who leave them. Meanwhile, on the Lorhouns Network recently, David and I released an episode talking about the Napoleon movie where spoiler alert, I didn't necessarily love

[02:49:08] the movie, but I love Napoleon as a historical figure. So you get to listen to me geek out on a bunch of Napoleon fun facts. And I seem to have like a weird fixation with his brother, Louis. So be prepared.

[02:49:19] But I had a lot of fun making that episode. And coming up, John and my friend Simon and I will be doing a Doctor Who episode about the specials that are airing right now. And also on the MC Universe Front, What If is coming up?

[02:49:33] So we have an episode coming up where we're going to recap season one for anyone who wants a reminder or to figure out what it is for the first time. And then we'll be covering the new season as they come out.

[02:49:45] And of course, properly Howard's there on hiatus now. But I recommend going there for funny recaps of horror movies. And also their last season was sequel movies in general. So you don't have to necessarily have watched the movie to enjoy the podcast.

[02:50:02] And those guys and David and John are teaming up together for the Severance podcast. So Stephen and Anthony are recapping Severance Season One right now. And then the four of them will cover season two when it comes out.

[02:50:15] As for us, we'll see you back in this feed in two weeks with more Beacon 23. Until then, we'll be listening to opera with Bart and tripping on Space Spores. OK, David, this is where we're supposed to choose a side, green or black?

[02:50:50] John, my soul is as black as night. Your turn. I am black for life. So we're not fighting. I thought this is where HBO wanted us to like pick sides and fight and stuff. Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find plenty to disagree about on the pod.

[02:51:08] But we seem to agree on one thing. We both really like the show. The politics, the drama, the lore it was made for the Lorehounds. And since we just finished recapping season one, we couldn't be more ready to defend our black queen in the Dance of the Dragons.

[02:51:23] And with the season pass option and Supercast, listeners can get early, ad free access to each weekly scene by scene deep dive, plus our custom show guide with all the characters and connections. See you in the Lorehounds podcast feed each week for our dragonfire hot,

[02:51:39] but probably positive takes. The Lorehounds House of the Dragon covers is also safe for team green consumption. Side effects may include a deeper understanding of dragon lore, a hardened conflict with itself and an inescapable urge to read the book fire and blood by George R.R.

[02:51:49] Martin. Dragon seeds may experience burning.