This episode just blew me away with its predictions of the future. First up, we have a computer hacked remotely making it go haywire. It’s a hackneyed plot device now, but here it was showing up nearly 30 years ago. When Chandri describes the device used to hack the computer he calls it a “worm” and then when he describes making the computer sick, Nathan responds “like a virus?” It’s almost like watching a sketch about retro TV predicting the future, except it’s all for real. And just for good measure, the hackers are referred to as the Black Hand Gang. And nowadays, computer hackers are often referred to as Black Hats. Amazing!
Later on, when Theroux quotes a movie line, Spring tries to cheat by using Box (his smartphone) to access a remote database (the internet) and answer the question. As if you could ever just type in a movie line or song lyric and have someplace tell you instantly where it came from. Oh, wait – you can! They even talk about electronic books. That must have seemed so far-fetched at the time. And yet now my wife and I read more books from our Kindles than from a physical book. I remember years ago seeing an ad about having books you can read on your phone. Their example was “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” by Jules Verne. “I’m never going to read a book on my phone,” I thought to myself. And yet in 2011-2012 I read the long, long novel “Mysterious Island’’ by Jules Verne solely on my phone. (I’d already read "20,000 Leagues".)
And as a final note, they have a secret government project to listen in on everyone’s phone and other conversations and look for any threatening language. Can you say NSA?
Alas, the only problem with the hacking story was the big reveal that it was all Chandri. It’s not like we had any other real suspects. His reasoning, if I understand correctly was this: He had perfected the secret listening device and even gave Nathan a threat that he had heard about taking over an Earth-Moon shuttle vessel. But then the whole thing crashed beyond repair. To cover up the failure, he planted the worm/virus in other machines on Earth and then in his own equipment to make it look like he’d been hacked and his work destroyed so that people would think he had been successful. This was all to please his father – who had died years ago. This was a suicide mission, but it included killing all of his co-workers as well. Nathan almost bit the dust too by just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he barely escapes with his life. It was all a letdown for me storywise, although the hairbreadth escape for Nathan was exciting to watch.
Now to the other story of the week. Nathan fires two of his employees for corruption, having caught them in the act of trying to shake down his newest recruit – Colin Devis from last week. (The footage of the female Pal Kenzy, by the way, looked like it could have been shot by a miniature hidden camera - also common today.) Pal Kenzy is really upset about being fired, but leaves. Nathan promotes Theroux to second in command, but then leaves him to fire the American employee Kirk Hubble. For shame, Nathan; fire your own people. (Though, I have to laugh at the man’s name: Kirk, as in Captain Kirk; Hubble, as in the Hubble telescope.)
Pal ends up running across Colin as she returns to the moon looking for another job. The message they got from Chandri is relayed to the crew who use a code name of Passenger Wilberforce to alert Davis. (I hope I'm remembering this correctly; remember, I have no closed-captioning or rewind capabilities.) Pal is armed and joins in the takedown of the hijackers who used a grenade made of glass to fool the metal detectors. (Shades of plastic guns used for the same purpose.) Pal bravely catches the grenade when it’s thrown. There’s a nice back and forth between the hijacking and Nathan’s escape from Chandri’s base. We see Pal catch the grenade and suddenly there’s a huge explosion – but it’s just the base camp on the moon blowing up a safe distance from Spring.
Despite being caught trying to shake down Colin, I still found Pal to be a spunky likeable character, so I was rather glad when she used the opportunity to finagle her old job back by pretending she and Davis were on a covert mission. Nathan moans that he doesn’t have to reinstate her – she’s managed to reinstate herself. She should be a fun addition to the team. I also like the conversations between Colin and Pal when he suggests they split a cabin and take shifts sleeping. Or we can share it, he jokes, women tell me I’m very cuddly. Later on she admits to not being married and he says he’s been married five times. “I told you I was cuddly,” he snickers. Naughty, but oddly sweet the way he delivered it.
Oh, and I loved that little moon buggy. Clearly a model, but fun to watch in action and realistic looking. I especially like the scene near the end where Nathan races it obviously faster that it was intended to go, but he still makes it.
Except for the hacker plot falling apart, it was a good episode. I’ll give it 7 guns that can target people of specific skin pigmentation. Since these days, people use the term “racist” like salt, sprinkling it on any non-race-related word or phrase they object to, it was nice to hear the term applied correctly on this episode. A gun that targets people based on their skin color really is a “racist gun”.
