The Truth Comes Out
Episode 4 of The Silent Sea begins with Captain Han in the past, walking past the Water Distribution Center to the hospital. His daughter is in a rough way and in fact, she may never walk again. It’s tough to take and Han does his best to put on a brave face for her. This shows more of his character, and his motivations for why he’s doing this mission. Back at Balhae Station, Jian and Hong both examine the water and notice it looks to be distilled. Jian and Dr Hong discuss just what Soochan’s symptoms are and how he could have produced that much water. It seems like the water itself could be a virus. That fountain of water Soochan produced? Well it could well be a virus multiplying inside his body. Given they have nothing in their system, our initial feelings back in episode 1 appear to ring true – this virus is of extraterrestrial origin. At the same time, Dr Hong examining and marveling at the clear water seems to hint that this virus is the solution to the problems on Earth. A simple test with a blood sample seems to prove as much. Elsewhere, Han descends into the depths of the chasm, heading down the elevator shaft. As one of the elevators begins to ascend, Han manages to move just in time to avoid the oncoming lift as it propels to the top and slams into the station. Although the electricity is still on, this malfunction is an ominous sign. In fact, Han soon finds himself slammed down and strung upside down in the elevator shaft. Even worse, after being pinballed against the sides like a ragdoll, his oxygen system is damaged. With Taesuk communicating over the radio, he helps talk Han through what to do with the systems to get him out of this predicament. And just in time too. Thankfully he makes it back and replenishes his oxygen before it’s too late. When the Captain recovers, he receives a strange communication coming from outside the station. It seems to be emanating from storage 3, which is the same room that Gisu was killed in. When the gang show up, there’s no one there. However, they do find an old communicator on Gisu which seems to hint that he’s a rogue agent and was working with someone else outside the group. It could well be that Gisu is responsible for tampering with the biosignals too, but that remains to be seen. More importantly, the group manage to get the comms working again, as Han speaks back with SAA. Now, we’ll ignore the obvious tie delays and how unlikely this live call would be, as Han feeds back about the mole within the group. The Director soon questions whether anyone else is working with him. For now, it appears Gisu was working alone. Han though is more interested in Director Choi’s nonchalance at the theory of a survivor onboard. It seems she knows more than she’s letting on. As the episode reaches the business end of its run-time, we finally get some answers. Han has been well aware what their mission has been all this time. He was briefed before going about the water on the moon. While all the other countries pulled out, seeing the exploration of Moon as a waste of time, the Koreans pressed on. And they were rewarded for it. Thanks to Mr Park’s help, they found water droplets and that in itself would have been enough of a discovery to catch up with the rest of the developed world, especially with the perceived space race to Mars heating up. Han has been hiding all of this from the team, trying to prevent mass hysteria, while also investigating what happened that made all of this go so horribly wrong. What Han isn’t aware of those is how dangerous this sample actually is. And he gets a pretty big wake-up call when Jian returns. The fact that this water can be multiplied and replicated could well be humanity’s salvation – and downfall. Jian’s sister knew this and she tried to help them. As we’ve seen though, all of this went horribly wrong when everyone ended up contaminated. The lunar water infection is just too volatile and unpredictable right now. What may help swing things in their favour though is Han’s other bit of knowledge he’s been keeping from them. It turns out he knows that codes to get into the restricted areas, courtesy of Director Choi. When Jian finds out, she convince him to hand them over so she can study the data. Despite data storage being off-limits, Han refuses to hand the codes over but joins her to investigate. Verifying the code, he opens the door and notices fauna growing all over the vents leading down to parts unknown.
The Episode Review
If there’s one thing this show has done really well with, it’s building up a consistent level of dread and mystery. The science behind the water droplets is a nice way to go and it feels quite similar to the Doctor Who episode, The Waters of Mars. Unlike that episode where maniacal infected rushed around the facility trying to kill everyone, the story here is much more of a slow burn. If I’d wager a guess I’d say the shadowy figure is actually Jian’s sister, who’s still alive, while the water virus appears to be hinted toward solving the problems on Earth While there are other parts of this that feel a little contrived, the actual plot and story has been really nicely plotted so far.
