An Egg-stremely Bad Plan
Episode 4 of Intergalactic Season 1 begins with Tula putting a gun to Ash’s face. The Hemlock is bound for the Hestia Reef, which happens to hold a research vessel. There’s a variety of different animals aboard, including Earthbound pets and more alien species too. Anyway, Tula demands the sole researcher there hand over the ship. However, Tula’s bad temper gets her bitten by a poisonous creature called Larus Draco. Because of this, she’s kept in isolation and told to rest while she recovers. Echo and Ash head back to the Hemlock, intent on 3D printing gear needed to help their plight. Only, while they’re there the pair get talking and eventually that leads to them kissing. They do eventually 3D print the schematics…but it turns out to be an explosive. As soon as they realize, it detonates and blows the pair back, knocking them down to the floor. On the research vessel, Candy starts looking around for gear, chuckling triumphantly when she finds some needles. Verona meanwhile, finds out that this researcher (whom we later find out is called Hague Blake) is intending to hand them in to the Commonworld. Verona is blindsided before she can tell the others though, and captured. Sirens suddenly wail overhead signifying that the Commonworld are inbound to their location. Only, this is all a bit ruse. It turns out Dr Hague Blake has planned this whole event. Through the comms, we find out more about Hague and Emma Greave’s connection. It turns out she was part of the founding research team that uncovered New Aurum, this element we’ve been hearing so much about all season long. Emma and her team extracted it from a meteorite and intended to use New Aurum to propel humanity forward. They believed it could help make fossil fuels obsolete and become crucial to space flight. As Emma calls it, this is the “holy grail” of fusion energy. With the Commonworld hell-bent on domination, Blake Hague decides to use this to his advantage and extract Emma’s eggs. He wants to use this in order to make his different creatures live forever, just like her. As Hague chuckles, he also reveals there’s nothing wrong with Tula. Ash and Echo both hurry back to the ship though and attack Blake. Verona also awakens and manages to open Tula’s door. She condemns Blake and shoots him in the head. Tula grits her teeth and tells Emma ironically that the “universe is full of men who think they can take what they want.” Just a friendly reminder, Tula is part of an all-female fugitive group who have literally taken whatever they want across the entire season, killing anyone in cold blood who stands in their way. Anyway, Tula is angry, which is understandable given her past history. She’s had a nasty upbringing and she eventually killed her husband and (presumably) her Father too. Tula spits in the direction of Blake, telling the girls all they should have just killed him in the first place. Back on Earth, we cut to Parsons Green which is deep in the heart of Old London. Rebecca waits from afar as a group of black ops officers show and shoot one of her workers dead. It seems like they’re working with Dr Lee. Could he be part of this inside job we’ve been hearing about? Back on the ship, Emma works against the group as she lets the poisonous spider from Hague’s vessel aboard. She sets it loose and watches from afar as it heads over to Ash and bites her arm. As the girl collapses on the ground, the episode comes to a close.
The Episode Review
It’s taken nearly half a season but now we finally see some alien species. However, it’s fair to say this universe is very, very empty. Almost every location we’ve visited has had a skeleton crew of some description or minimal people on-screen, which gives the impression this universe just isn’t that big. The intriguing ideas surrounding Emma Greaves and the fuel is about the only glimmer of hope left with this show, which continues to reach for mediocrity but comes up short. The preposterous idea of using Emma’s eggs to try and give eternal life to Hague’s creatures just doesn’t make any sense. It seems like a flight of fancy concocted up in a cartoon and a far cry from any sort of realism. It also muddies Hague’s motivations too. This time we receive an ironic speech from Tula about the horrors of men and how they take what they want. While that may be true, given what we’ve seen so far across the season it seems to be the opposite. Rebecca had Wendell shot in cold blood. Tula has killed multiple people. Ash has been stealing everything and still hasn’t reflected on her killing all those people. In the end, Intergalactic is not a good show and these later episodes – although slightly better than the janky openers – still suffer from the same sloppy writing and disjointed sci-fi we’ve been experiencing all season long. There are pockets of characterization coming in now to be fair, but given we’re halfway through the show now, this should have come much, much sooner.
