Killjoys Recap - S02E03 - "Shaft"

The team now has an arrangement with Turin that should help both sides uncover what Khylen is after—if they survive Turin's tasks, of course. Meanwhile, Pawter proves to be self-sufficient and not really in need of rescue, thank you very much.

The team's first mission is connected to a salvage warrant gone bad. A week before, three RAC agents (a man, his wife Tanya, and her sister) were sent to Westerley's Northern Badlands. This is suspicious, because the region's main resource is nothing—but then, after they asked for evacuation, Khylen intercepted it and covered it up. It's up to Dutch's team (with temporary help from Alvis) to find out what happened there.

They first find the trio's ship, covered in moss... in the middle of a desert. Soon, they also find one of the missing Killjoys: Tanya, pretty damn spooked. She asks them to help her find her sister, down in the mineshaft. Again, that's not supposed to be there due to the region's complete lack of natural resources. This is a job for Alvis; his religion evolved in Westerley's mines, and he's an ex-miner himself, so this is right up his alley. As they go deeper, they find more moss—but they don't notice that it has started to move.

Meanwhile, Pawter is trying to get into Jelko's database to find a way to get out. The latter is especially problematic, as the prick put a DNA-locked bomb bracelet on her ankle that will go boom if she gets too close to the perimeter. Turns out Jelko needs her help; due to the inbreeding in his low noble family, he has a heart condition that forces him to suck out the membrane once in a while or he'll die. And since Pawter is a doctor...

Back in the mine, Tanya sees her husband, threatens him, and fires at him. He survives and she tries to follow, but Dutch smartly decides that she's a liability and leaves her with Johnny. Johnny tries to get her back to Lucy, but Tanya hears her husband and follows through an already fragile opening that crashes, trapping everyone except Johnny in the mine. They follow Tanya while Johnny tries to blast his way through the rubble.  Meanwhile, Tanya finds her sister's body and her husband, ready to kill her. She falls into a hole and Dutch pulls her up, because the living moss drugs Tanya into the pit and starts nomming on her.

It turns out the moss is some sort of insect that camouflages as moss and once Johnny cuts it in half with his laser, both halves start moving separately. Like earthworms, except for real. They also seem to have a hivemind and their bites make people hallucinate, which explains Tanya's behaviour—she hallucinated her husband. Also, when D'Avin squashes one, the same green liquid he was injected with starts pouring out of it; this might be the reason Khylen intercepted that transmission.

Speaking of Khylen, Dutch sees him and follows—but because we already saw her get bitten by one of the moss-centipedes, we know it's not real. Sure enough, she falls through a hole and has a hallucinated conversation—first with Khylen, then with herself. Luckily, the team finds her and Alvis, using his monk skills, manages to snap her out of it enough to get back on Lucy. They manage to get through a swarm of those bugs thanks to D'Avin's immunity to the green liquid, which seems to freak the insects out, allowing them passage.

Meanwhile Pawter performs an operation on Jelko and, after knocking out the guard attending the surgery, uses the man's DNA (his blood on her gloves) to gain full access to his files—including the wall. And not just the one surrounding Old Town—a lot of walls. The Company seems to have similar plans for other towns. Pawter uses Jelko's DNA to take off the bomb bracelet and put it on his heart and casually walks out of the compound with Jelko unable to follow. Unfortunately, after contacting Johnny, she gets knocked unconscious by a robed figure.

The team is licking their wounds, but they have a breakthrough—during the madness, Alvis uncovered a buried monk that left a message on a piece of his own skin. It's a continuation of a piece of scarback history/myth that Alvis has on his back: "Twelve went to Arkyn to fight the devil." The rest of it is "and one returned"—this monk, specifically. It all seems to connect to the memory of a battle between the monks and a group of people that D'Av was imprinted with when Khylen tried to inject him with the green liquid. Alvis decides to go to Leith and look for more information in his order's writings. Meanwhile, Dutch goes to visit Turin to alter their deal. During her hallucination she realized that she has been used by others (most of them men) all her life—and she's just about had enough. If Turin wants to find out what's going on, he'll have to agree to do things her way.

I like how focused on the main plotline this season is. We'll see where it leads us next week in "Thursday's Child." I'll see you then.

ASSORTED THOUGHTS
- Pawter seems to have a crush on Johnny. Or, as Lucy puts it, "signs of psychological fixation."

- So Killjoys have a lot of cool gear, as Alvis notes. Dutch's reply: "Comes with the job. Like sexy jackets and early death."

Dominik Zine is a nerdy lad from northeastern Poland and is generally found in a comfy chair with a book in hand.

Killjoys Recap - S02E02 - "Wild, Wild Westerley"

Now that the team is back together, they can finally start working towards uncovering the many mysteries in the Quad. Their first goal is to get into Old Town and find Alvis, their friend and one of the penitents - the only person they who can tell them what happened on Arkyn. Unfortunately, the city is surrounded by an impassable containment field, so the team needs a warrant to be allowed passage. And to do that, they need a RAC official to clear D'Avin for active duty. With Turin stabbed to death by Khylen, and the latter AWOL, the only one available is...

...Turin, who gets throttled halfway through his "rumours of my demise" speech. The team suspects he's a Level 6, but once they discover his stab wound still hasn't fully healed (ergo no Level 6 healing factor), they proceed with the formalities. With a warrant in hand, they attempt the get through the wall, which scans them. Remember how last week we learned Pree has a criminal record? We still don't know many details, but we do learn that he was a warlord. And now I want a prequel spin-off about Pree as the space warlord.

Last week Pree's secret past helped them, but this time it gets them knocked out and taken to a Company compound, where they meet their client -- a Company official named Liam Jelko. And you know he's evil, because he has a British accent and acts like a complete prick.  He gives them their assignment: during Old Town's rebellion, a Company bomber was shot down and crushed into a prison with eight people convicted for political reasons. Dutch's team is to capture them alive; especially their leader, Tarren Tighmon.

They find the first of their targets in Pree's bar, but after revealing his compatriots are still in prison he shoots himself because that's a better alternative than the Company prison. At that location they find his six former buddies--dead and dried up like thousand year old mummies--and a prison employee. They learn from him that when the bomber crashed and the inmates started getting out, he followed the instructions and pressed a button that ended up releasing a puff of gas that caused their gruesome deaths. With seven targets dead, only Tighmon remains, and here's the bad news: after his escape he returned to the prison to clear out the weapons room and took a whole tank of that gas.

With the help of Pawter and Hills (the Company official formerly in charge of Old Town who seemed to have died in the bombing in last season's finale) they finally find Alvis, who helps them get to Tighmon. The man agrees to be taken and to return the tank - if Dutch speaks on behalf of Old Town's mine workers and convinces the Company to drop the containment field. But before she gets a chance to reply, a Company drone arrives and shoots Tighmon down. Turns out Jelko put trackers on the team and now would like his gas back. And when they decline, he announces across the entire Old Town that whoever captures Dutch (alive or dead) and gets the gas tank to him will be allowed to leave and get a nice new home elsewhere on Westerley. Prick.

With the entire town on their tail, the team and Alvis return to Pree and split up. Alvis will take Dutch and D'Av out of the city via tunnels under Old Town, Johnny will get Pawter and Hills to go with them. Pree decides to stay, having finally returned home. Meanwhile Hills convinces Pawter to go with him to the compound and try to contact her mother (a matriarch of one of the Nine Families and one of the Company's major shareholders) and try to convince the Company to drop the containment field. Unfortunately, during their meeting with Jelko he shoots Hills as a traitor and refuses to honor Pawter's request, basically imprisoning her "to keep her safe." Prick.

Alvis takes Dutch and D'Avin underneath the compound and then locks himself in a room and connects the gas tank to the ventillation. After the bombing, the Old Town's lockdown, and what just happened to Tighmon, he decided his religion can go to hell. He'd rather have revenge. But after Johnny arrives and tells them Hills and Pawter are in the compound, he tries to stop the gas and gets a breathful of it himself. Thanks to D'Av and a conveniently placed reservoir of water--the only thing that can save him from drying up--he lives. That's unfortunately one of the show's flaws: often it telegraphs its plot points. As soon as Pawter tells the team that the only thing that might stop the effects of the gas is a lot of water, you know someone's going to get under its effect and the only cure will be nearby.

With all eight targets dead and the gas tank empty, the team meets with Jelko, demanding release of Hills and Pawter. Jelko claims the former has a headache (hilarious) and brings the latter, who claims she'll stay in the compound, because she'll be able to help Oldtowners better this way. No one's buying it, so Johnny sneakily leaves a communication device with her. They also learn that Jelko's plan for Old Town is to starve them out until any thought of rebellion leaves them and they tell the rest of the Quad "We need the Company. The Company is good.0" And only then will he lower the wall. Prick.

Now it's off to Arkyn with Alvis! Only for Lucy to be remotely hijacked by a special beacon.

Their hijacker turns out to be Turin - he needs their help in finding out what the hell is going on in RAC and how many Level 6 agents are there. They're going to need each other - especially since the Red 17 facility is gone following the team's infiltration and breakout. Turin is going to give the unofficial tasks, "unsanctioned warrants", that should help all of them get to the truth.

How their cooperation works out, we'll see in next week's "Shaft". I'll see you then.

ASSORTED THOUGHTS

- I love how Dutch seems to be unable to come up with zingers when she's angry. After she discovers Jelko's trackers, she tells Pree to flush them with words, "He tracked the shit out of us, we'll shit the track out of him".

- The episode begins with Dutch hallucinating her reflection moving separately from her. It's obviously important, but there's not much more to say about it.

- When the team brings up of the gas victims' bodies to Pawter, Johnny warns her that it's pretty gruesome. Pawter reminds him that as a doctor she saw much worse things, but in case it makes him feel better she says: "Oh no! A mummy!" Pawter doesn't give a damn.

- So when the team gets to Pree's bar, it turns out a muscle-bound guy named Gareth has taken it over in his absence. Dutch challenges him to a fight for it and, because he is too slow and dumb, wins and breaks his leg. He later goes to see Pawter for some medicine for his leg because "some bitch stepped on it". Pawter gives him a painkiller, only for him to pull a knife on her and demand all of the pills. She casually kicks his crutch and then steps on his leg, breaking it even more, which causes him to yell "What is wrong with these bitches?!" And the he reappears at Pree's bar again, after the Killjoys are gone (possibly to try to take the bar back)... only for Pree to take his knife from him and pin his hand to the table with it. I almost felt sorry for the poor S.O.B.

Dominik Zine is a nerdy lad from northeastern Poland and is generally found in a comfy chair with a book in hand.

Killjoys Recap - S02E01 - "Dutch and the Real Girl"

Here we go - the first episode of the new Killjoys season. It primarily deals with resolution of last year's cliffhanger, but also weaves in clues to the main conspiracy plot. Plus, we get a kickass new cyborg female character.

We begin with the team seemingly reunited and storming the Red 17 facility where D'Avin was kept. But it doesn't take long for the show to confirm what everyone watching suspected from the start - it's all just a dream. Specifically, it's a dream D'Avin is having under the influence of some sort of green substance that's been injected into his spine. The techs give him more of it, ending his pleasant dream of being in Dutch's arms and causing him horrendous pain. Say no to green liquid, kids.

But as it turns out, his dream sequence is not that far off. Dutch and Johnny (joined by their buddy, Pree the gay former bartender) are on board Lucy, in orbit over Arkyn, having found out the location of the base he was taken to. Unfortunately for them, there's a defensive field covering the moon's atmosphere, which burns up anything trying to get through without proper authorization. After a head-on approach (courtesy of Dutch) almost kills them, they start looking for a more subtle way to land. Thanks to a tip/warrant from Dutch's handler Bellus, they learn of a family of pirates who used to operate from Arkyn, having a shield protecting their ship from the field. Unfortunately, the shield is in Eulogy - a bad guy bar on Westerley, where only people with a criminal record and a high entry fee can enter (as one of Bellus's Killjoys found out the hard way). Luckily for them, they have someone with a record - Pree. We don't learn what he did to end up in prison, but considering he gained not one, but two aliases - it's gotta be interesting.

They work out a plan - Pree gets Johnny into Eulogy as his plus one, and Dutch is smuggled into the bar's storage via their entry fee crate. While the two mingle, she locates the shield (with the help of a contact lense Johnny designed that searches for devices with traces of Arkyn's radiation).

Unfortunately, that shield is a person - a girl named Clara that the pirates kidnapped and took to The Factory. There she was turned into a cyborg, with a shield on her torso and a gun arm to keep any thieves away from her (with a friendly fire block that prevented her from shooting her kidnappers - they're criminals, not morons). She calls the latter Alice. When the plan to have Lucy hack her way into Eulogy's system backfires, they choose Plan B; Johnny and Pree use the bar's elevator (a.k.a. the slowest moving elevator ever), while Dutch and Clara fight their way through hordes of criminals in an awesome sequence that I wish I was currently able to GIF for you.

Meanwhile, D'Avin is in a pickle himself. The effects of the green liquid that's supposed to turn him into a Level 6 RAC Agent include a memory that's implanted into everyone subjected to it. It's a memory of a battle fought on Arkyn between two sides - the Westerlyn penitent monks and a unidentified group. After meeting Khylen in that memory, D'avin wakes up in a tub of the green liquid. Startled the techs explain to Khylen that D'Avin is immune to it, which is supposed to be impossible - the only results anyone's ever seen are a Level 6 Killjoy or a dead failure.

After a moment's consideration, Khylen kills the techs and helps D'Avin escape. He explains that he wanted to turn him into a Level 6 agent to protect Dutch from some organization called the Black Root. He helps D'Av get out of the facility, sacrificing himself and getting captured by the Black Root in the process.

Meanwhile the crew on Lucy get through the protective layer and into the Red 17 facility, freeing a fellow Killjoy and resident asshole, Fancy Lee. Lucy informs them that she located D'Avin's tracker and the team reunites. After returning to their ship, D'Avin shoots Lee, revealing that he was already injected with the green liquid and has become a Level 6 agent. They toss him outside and take off.

The team tells D'Avin about the bombing of Westerley's Oldtown, which is now off limits to everyone, and the fact that their two remaining friends - doctor Pawter Sims and Alvis, the revolutionary penitent monk - are still there. That's their next goal - but meanwhile they part ways with Clara. They (including Lucy) would very much like to keep her on board - but the Company law withholds personhood to anyone who's been cybernetically modded more than 26 percent. Dutch leaves her with a smuggler buddy of hers, who can help Clara get out of the Quad.

In the episode's final moments, D'Avin recounts everything he's learned from Khylen and surmises that everything the man has done might have been to protect Dutch from the Black Root, who D'Av suspects are the people he has to report to. While Dutch isn't ready to believe Khylen, D'Av believes she is more connected to everything that she knows. She says she's never been to Arkyn - but he saw her in the green liquid memory, as one of the fighters in the battle.

And thus, with an explosive premier written by the show's creator Michelle Lovretta herself, Killjoys is back with a new helping of fun, explosions and mystery. I'll see you next week for "Wild, Wild Westerley".

Dominik Zine is a nerdy lad from northeastern Poland and is generally found in a comfy chair with a book in hand.

Previously on Killjoys

2015, among other things, was the year Syfy finally returned to what they should’ve been doing all those years since Battlestar Galactica ended – proper sci-fi/fantasy programming. The Expanse is obviously the best example of that, but it also includes shows like Dark Matter, 12 Monkeys and Killjoys, which returns on July 1.

Created by Michelle Lovretta of Lost Girl fame and co-produced with Canadian TV channel Space, Killjoys is a space opera about a trio of titular Killjoys. This is a derogatory term used for agents of a politically neutral Reclamation Acquisition Coalition (RAC – basically a bounty hunters guild), operating in a solar system with four inhabited worlds known as the Quad. They travel the system in the AI-operated ship Lucy, collect warrants and generally try to have a life in a territory divided by social standing and background.

Killjoys is not a terribly smart show. It’s not The Expanse, Orphan Black, or Person of Interest, which I recently finished recapping for Critical Writ. But it’s a fun ride with enjoyable character, especially for people who’d like more of that Guardians of the Galaxy flavor until Volume 2 hits the entire world and those who miss Firefly.

The show’s main character and the team’s leader is Dutch, played by Hannah John-Kamen. Dutch is a girl (of color!) with a dark and troubled past, which first season mostly untangled. Trained to be an assassin by the enigmatic Khlyen since she was eight, she’s tried to escape her mentor, only to have recent events draw his attention back to her.

She ends up drawing her teammates into her problems - Johnny Jaqobis (played by Aaron Ashmore, the most Chris Pratty actor available in Canada) and his older brother D’Avin (played by Luke Macfarlane). Johnny is Dutch’s longtime partner in RAC activities and they have a close sibling like relationship. It’s actually a great example of a male-female friendship – including a fantastic moment that’s connected to a scene between the two Jaqobis’ in the pilot. Having just joined the crew, D’Avin tells his brother that Dutch is definitely hiding something. This was right after she discovered Khlyen returned to her life, so a viewer experienced in TV drama would suspect a standard reveal procedure – character doesn’t know their friend’s dark secret, friend is forced to reveal it, drama ensues. Except when Dutch is driven to asking her teammates for help, all she has to tell Johnny is that Khlyen found her – because she already told him about her past before the show’s start.

D’Avin is the last addition to the team – Johnny’s older brother who joined the army and left him to take care of their parents. Unlike the other two, he only becomes a RAC Agent over the course of the first half of the season, after he reappears in Johnny’s life. He’s suffering from PTSD and gaps in his memory related to his last military mission. Those, as we learn over the season, are thanks to taking part in a military experiment to create an obedient and ruthless soldier – which resulted in him killing his entire squad.

The Quad, where the action takes place, consists of an Earth-like planet Qresh and its three moons – Westerley, Leith and Arkyn. The first two of those satellites were terraformed successfully, while the third is deemed uninhabitable. It’s officially run by a morally ambigous Company, but as the nine largest Qreshi families are its only shareholders, they are the de facto rulers of the system. Leith is the system’s food source, while Westerley is a mining world, where most off-system immigrants arrive and is the most abused by the Company.

As is frankly obvious, Westerlyns are not happy with this arrangement, and the bone the Company tossed them (7th generation Westerlyns are allowed to move to Qresh and will be given land to farm) isn’t enough. Especially since due to the harsh conditions of Westerley, there’s no guarantee there will by a seventh generation in their family, and people who never farmed in their entire life aren’t exactly likely to make successful farmers. So naturally they rebelled – and the Company nuked the rebelling district, turning it into a set from a Mad Max movie (or Australia from Overwatch). That did not exactly calm everyone and tensions are still high.

So it doesn’t help that the Company arrests Alvis, a priest of a local religion, secret revolutionary and the team’s occasional ally, on drummed up charges. And the fact that the council of the Nine gathers up to vote on whether to actually allow 7th generation Westerlyns to move to Qresh. Meanwhile the team discovers Khlyen is a RAC official – and a Level 6 agent, which is supposed to be impossible. The rumours (which turn out to be true) have it that becoming Level 6 involves being experiment on, which includes numbing pain receptors.

Their attempts to kill him backfire and they end up in the mess happening on Westerley, forced to help their friends escape from a bombing of Oldtown ordered by the company. Meanwhile there’s a coup in the council, using a bloodline targeting weapon (discovered earlier in the season – it kills everyone sharing the same DNA), leaving only three families standing. And as Dutch discovers, Khlyen (and by extension, RAC) was involved in the coup.

In the entire mess, D’Avin catches sight of Khlyen and tries to follow him and take him out. Of course, he’s outclassed and taken prisoner. As the season ends, we learn he’s in a secret base Red 17 – on a supposedly unterraformed Arkyn.

So there’s a lot the new season will have to deal with – the team lookimg for D’Avin, the political mess of the Quad, and the fight against Khlyen. We’ll see how everything shakes out on July 1, which I'll be recapping for you.

Dominik Zine is a nerdy lad from northeastern Poland and is generally found in a comfy chair with a book in hand