Never Gonna Give You Up
Episode 7 of Another Life Season 2 begins with William losing control as USIC officers begin stripping the Salvare apart. However, he continues to see visions of Niko too, who encourages him to keep searching as she’s still out there. Elsewhere, an undeterred Niko begins making a sail for their end of the ship. It’s been a week and Niko is not giving up hope that they’ll get out of this alive. She intends to use lasers to propel themselves forward. By her calculations, it’s going to take 10 days but Niko has plans to recalculate their trajectory and head back to the colony planet Paula and the others touched down on. Now, there’s no answer as to exactly how she managed to set up the sail outside but I guess she just did it effortlessly.
With the sail set up and their course set, Niko and Richard get to work bowling and getting drunk. Back on Earth, the crew of the Salvare find themselves subjected to a series of interviews. Zayn though is struggling to keep it together. As each of the crew members discuss Javier’s implant and how they needed to remove it because he was deteriorating, Seth hones in on Zayn as the weak-link. Seth points out that her hands give her away, grilling the young woman over her lies. In order to persuade her, he uses her mother’s illness as a bargaining chip to learn the truth about what’s really going on. That’s not all though. It would appear as if Seth has got to Cas, as she struggles to remember crucial details of the mission. When Eric questions her in secret, it would appear as if Seth has wiped her memory. Back with Niko and Richard, they realize something has happened to their ship as they’re thrown off-course and it’s going to take a lot longer than they initially thought. A whole 16 days to be precise. Well, in order to save some room – and oxygen – they decide to get rid of any extra trinkets on the ship, throwing it all out the airlock. This action does save them a few days but it appears as if something else is aboard with them. When Richard heads back to his room, he hears skittering and weird noises coming from the vents. Importantly, a bottle of fentanyl happens to be on his counter. Niko too is convinced there’s something out there so the duo work together to try and track it down. Creeping through the airducts, they eventually come across… nothing. After searching through every part of the ship, both Richard and Niko begin to fall out, with the latter calling out his reliance on pills. However, Niko is still convinced there’s something out there and dons her spacesuit, seeing the Achaian in the landing bay. Only, all of this appears to be a hallucination, given Richard can’t actually see anything. Speaking of hallucinations, William too continues to see both Iara and Niko. Apparently both of them are a part of his coding and he decides to embrace this, rekindling all of his past memories and reintegrating back to his form before the hard reset. How? Who knows. Back on Niko’s ship, it turns out the duo have been suffering from nitrogen narcosis. This explains their hallucinations and paranoia. With everything now back to normal and atmosphere levels returning to how they were before, the pair decide to get back to drinking again. The duo toast to the salvation of Earth… and contemplate whether to end it all and OD right there. Just before they do though, alarms wail as a ship suddenly shows up. It’s not the Achaia… so who could it be?
The Episode Review
The longest episode of Another Life Season 2 is ironically also the slowest too. With the crew back on Earth now, most of this chapter is taken up with Niko and Richard wandering around their ship and drinking. It’s pretty dull in truth, and there’s still no explanation around how they managed to set up the sails outside the ship. I know it may sound nitpicky but when it comes to space sci-fi, it’s nice to see some of this shown 0ff, especially given the sheer amount of scientific babble that these characters exude. However, the ideas aboard the ship with both Richard and Niko starting to grow paranoid is a nice touch, although it certainly takes a long time for them to actually get to the point here. As far as fillers go, this one’s about as close as you could come to it. Hopefully the rest of the season will improve but given what we’ve seen so far, it’s perhaps best to taper those expectations!
