S02.E06: We Should Have Seen This Coming

[formerlyfreedom]

Desperate for money, the Raza crew follow Nyx's lead on an op, only to discover that their target is a personal one.

 

[atomationage]

Backstories for newbies?  Bye Bye Dark Matter. 

[Chaos Theory]

I guess I should have seen this coming;  finally an episode this season that I didn't enjoy.  An entire episode dedicated to a new character is a little much then again I dont paricularly care about Nyx so her backstory was major meh.  Sad about her bro though.

The best parts of the episode were the scenes between Two and the Android & Three and Six.    Other then that the episode didn't do much for me.

Edited August 6, 2016 by Chaos Theory

[wanderingstar]

I liked Milo. I wish he could have stayed. I'm not familiar with Mpho Koaho, but I'd have loved to see Milo as a recurring character on this show.

Enjoyed learning more of Nyx's backstory. I kind of like her dynamic with Four too.

Also liked the bickering between Three and Six, which was pretty in character for both.

And I found the concept of the precogs interesting (sorry, someone on Twitter mentioned Minority Report in relation to this ep, and now I can't shake it) So, between that, the time travel device Five has and the Shadow drug the Raza Crew stole, there's plenty of stuff for the corporations to go to war over. And that's before we even get to the human-passing androids!

[sjohnson]

It seemed to me that show clearly meant us to know that Tetsuda didn't tell Nyx he persuaded her brother to kill himself. Truthfully to me it played out like Tetsuda didn't want competition from the seers for his plans for galactic domination after he finally takes his throne. I don't think he has much interest in the coming war other than how it might aid or abet his schemes for power. But it's a little unnerving how the show apparently really does want us to see him as noble, even as it plays with revolution of, by and for kick-ass heroes. 

As to that, Varrick's mass murders of the General's men and his failed Javertian pursuit of the General says to me that he is against revolutions. Boone is too cool to believe in a cause (but no doubt the script will have him reluctantly hero for his friends, because in Hollywood the only acceptable motives are family and friends.) Emily/Five is too weird and self-absorbed to predict very easily, but her kill them all attitude will probably serve her well in dealing with the corporations. Two is primarily committed to offing people who threaten the crew. (Hollywood is convinced that only making it personal is interesting.) 

You can have a character say that maybe the Raza crew can make a difference, but there's enough trouble believing in a handful of heroes turning the world right side up by personally fighting a handful of villains. But having a handful of villains do that? Really?

[SimoneS]

I enjoyed this episode. I like Nyx a lot. The actress is stunningly beautiful. Poor Nyx. She will be crushed to learn about Milo's death. Too bad that Four convinced him to kill himself. I thought Nyx and Four would make a good couple if he would only pull that stick out of his ass. Now, she is far more likely to kill him when she learns the truth.

I liked Milo a lot too. I think that he is right that one of them will betray the others again. Likely it will be the drug addicted doctor. He is clearly the most vulnerable.

I was surprised that Six agreed to go along with the drug deal. He is desperate, but I wish that he had held his ground. I also wish that he would have punched Three in the face.

Now something is wrong with Two so she will have to back to the company that helped make her to find a cure.

Edited August 6, 2016 by SimoneS

[thuganomics85]

Cool seeing Mpho Koaho, even if Anthony ended up becoming an idiot by the end of Falling Skies' run.  Had a feeling Milo wasn't going to make it, but I was thinking Four was somehow going to find a way to have Milo take himself and the entire ship out with him.  Instead, it was only himself. I'm sure it will only be a matter of time before Nyx finds out.  Especially if she and Four keep bonding.

Still not that wild about Nyx in general, but I guess it was good to finally get her backstory in, since it seems like she will probably be here for a while.  While her and Four are interesting enough, I'm hoping they revisit the somewhat hostile relationship between her and Two.

Of course, the show would find a way to have Three and Six get trapped together, and I heartily approve of it!  Those two never fail to entertain me.  I like that Three still clearly doesn't trust Six, but he is slowly being more willing to give him another chance.  But I do wonder what will Six have to do to finally earn it back.

Two is now starting to fritz, so I guess they'll be needing to worry about her soon.  I wonder if we'll ever see the return of Evil Bearded Wil Wheaton!

Sounds like Milo might have set-up the endgame for the season, by claiming that someone on the Raza crew will end up betraying the crew again, in some form or another.  I doubt they'll have it be Six again, so I wonder who it will be?  I can see it being anyone at this point. 

[zxy556575]

I could make a case for the traitor being anyone but Android, especially if there was mind control involved or threats to kill others.

[Raja]

7 hours ago, SimoneS said:

I enjoyed this episode. I like Nyx a lot. The actress is stunningly beautiful. Poor Nyx. She will be crushed to learn about Milo's death. Too bad that Four convinced him to kill himself. I thought Nyx and Four would make a good couple if he would only pull that stick out of his ass. Now, she is far more likely to kill him when she learns the truth.

I liked Milo a lot too. I think that he is right that one of them will betray the others again. Likely it will be the drug addicted doctor. He is clearly the most vulnerable.

I was surprised that Six agreed to go along with the drug deal. He is desperate, but I wish that he had held his ground. I also wish that he would have punched Three in the face.

Now something is wrong with Two so she will have to back to the company that helped make her to find a cure.

Didn't TPTB give Six the leagl/moral out that while a drug it was not on the GA list of illegal drugs

[Chaos Theory]

17 minutes ago, Raja said:

Didn't TPTB give Six the leagl/moral out that while a drug it was not on the GA list of illegal drugs

Yes they did. 

The show has the potential to run into the same problem with Six that they did with One but worse.  He is between a rock and a hard place with the crew of the Raza.  He can say his peace but if he stands his ground (especially now) they could just space him or drop him off at the nearest space station and he knows it.  He had made a choice to throw in with them so now he has to live with that choice.

[sjohnson]

Officially, Varrick turned on GA because they weren't going to put themselves out to stop the murder of Two, Boone and Tetsuda. They even repeated that in dialogue. The thing is, there's no reason for him to hang with the Raza and every reason for him to go his own way, except for not wanting him to get caught. And that is not a reason for Raza to keep him. Two deliberately implicating him in the drug heist doesn't really help, except as a way of making him one of the crew (i.e., a criminal.) Emily/Five might want to keep the family together, but she's a kid (officially, however implausible that looks,) and she's a little off. Moss would have because he would have thought they owed him and because he understood Varrick's motives. But when they killed off Moss, they killed that kind of thing off too. 

In short, at this point, Varrick is still around because Two is acting like Moss, except she's not Moss. Nor did she care so much about him she's continuing his legacy. The thing is, just having characters hang around for pointless conflict because it's exciting is still pointless. That sort of thing really takes a toll in the long run. 

[MissLucas]

Not this season's best outing I must say. I'm normally pretty good with hand-waving sci-fi stuff like precognition and mind-melting but somehow this was all so vague: there's a collective consciousnesses created by all the folks connected to the machine and they need drugs and then there are the seers who somehow use the consciousness to their advantage. 'The galaxy is awash with information' - you just have to tap in? How is that supposed to work? Obviously they need a docking-station otherwise Milo should have been able to tell Four the fate of his home-planet. It was all vague and pretty confusing and I had hoped that Four's alternative would have been something explosive. That way we would not have to deal with the seers in the future and no doomed romance between Four and Nyx either - both fine by me.

Also: how do the seers manage to organize supplies and fuel for their ship? And how do they pay for the drug? Are they selling info? And if they do how come they've not shown up on one of the corporations radar by now? Don't tell me by precognition.

Not exactly relevant to anything but I do not like the Android's new outfit (I did however like that she was sitting at the table when they were discussing strategy).

Three and Six were amusing but at this point the whole debate about Six's presence on board the Raza starts to feel like beating a dead horse. He's here to stay and the sooner he himself and Three accept that the better.

The main-plot was a bit meh but some of the micro-plots were intriguing: They managed to identify Reynaud, Five will sooner or later figure out the good Doctor's secret and Two and her jitters will of course become a major problem.

Edited August 6, 2016 by MissLucas

[Wouter]

16 hours ago, sjohnson said:

It seemed to me that show clearly meant us to know that Tetsuda didn't tell Nyx he persuaded her brother to kill himself. Truthfully to me it played out like Tetsuda didn't want competition from the seers for his plans for galactic domination after he finally takes his throne.

Tetsude/Four does not exactly want galactic domination, Zairon seems to be relatively small fry in the Galaxy. I get the impression that the really large corporations, like Ferrous, are more powerful than one independent planet. I think he did bond with Milo to some extent and wanted him to do what he himself would have done.

15 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

Two is now starting to fritz, so I guess they'll be needing to worry about her soon.  I wonder if we'll ever see the return of Evil Bearded Wil Wheaton!

Sounds like Milo might have set-up the endgame for the season, by claiming that someone on the Raza crew will end up betraying the crew again, in some form or another.  I doubt they'll have it be Six again, so I wonder who it will be?  I can see it being anyone at this point. 

They already told us about the Earth HQ of Dwarf Star Technologies (from evil bearded Wil), so I guess we will go there shortly now that Two is glitchy.

11 hours ago, lordonia said:

I could make a case for the traitor being anyone but Android, especially if there was mind control involved or threats to kill others.

It could also be the Android, now that she has met those humanlike models there could be a conflict of interest.

Allthough technically Milo's prediction could be wrong, it seems like this is direct foreshadowing by the writers and there will be another betrayal.

Who else, but the Android and Six (unlikely) could be the be new traitor?

-Two: seems unlikely as she has consistently felt and acted responsible for the entire crew

-Three: not much bagage left after he dealt with his past, seems loyal to Two and Four

-Four: he did say in s1 that he would not turn on the rest as long as it suited his interests. OTOH, Two looked to be willing to help his bid for the throne in Zairon.

-Five: we still don't know much about her or her possible relationship to Reynaud. Personality-wise, she seems unlikely, but she did surprise with "kill them all".

-Nyx: could turn on the crew after she finds out what happened (and why) to her brother, especially as the rest is not likely to turn on four.

-Devon: his addiction could lead to problems, but for the moment a betrayal by him wouldn't have much impact - too much of a blank slate. Still, he will no doubt get "his" episode like Nyx just got.

8 hours ago, Raja said:

Didn't TPTB give Six the leagl/moral out that while a drug it was not on the GA list of illegal drugs

The drug is illegal for the GA; they just don't act on it, according to Six because it helps to distract the population from the way things are being run.

 

Not the best episode, the Seers seem overpowerful and their predictive powers are indeed vaguely explained. They seem vaguely to be DM's version of the Borg, with some form of "assimilation" and "resistance is futile" involved. Now, where is Janeway when you need her?

[MissLucas]

I haven't spent much time trying to guess who the traitor could be. Technically it's a precognition but I consider it more of a prophesy - infuriatingly vague and while it might come to pass it will do so in unexpected ways: not done on purpose for example. So it could be any member of the crew incl. the Android.

[Black Knight]

17 minutes ago, Wouter said:

Who else, but the Android and Six (unlikely) could be the be new traitor?

-Two: seems unlikely as she has consistently felt and acted responsible for the entire crew

My money's on Two, precisely because she's the unlikeliest due to being in charge of everyone. Her betrayal would be a shock. But of course it won't really be Two, it'll be Portia Lin. If Two has to go back to her makers to fix whatever's wrong with her, I bet they restore her memory too - and so Five will be right, one season late, that something was "done" to Two that turned her into a traitor. It felt like this episode reinforced how important it is that Two is Two, not Portia: Portia wouldn't have helped Nyx and Milo (as Milo noted), Portia would just be spacing people she doesn't want around instead of dropping them off at a station or planet (and certainly would not be giving Nyx her fair cut), Portia wouldn't be passing out stunners saying they don't want to kill anyone if they don't have to, Portia would've killed Nyx's brother in that standoff with the Seers. Two acts as a brake on Three and Four - in a way, she's probably more effective than One in that function because Three and Four know that Two isn't naive or soft and so she has more credibility with them when she counsels restraint, etc. because they know she is not coming from a place of weakness.

I like Nyx a lot and I was glad to get her backstory. The actress is good and she vibes well with Four and Two. I'm puzzled about the assertion upthread that Two and Nyx's relationship is somewhat hostile, because I don't get that at all. Two was upset, rightly, at Nyx in this episode for not being upfront about wanting to retrieve her brother, but otherwise the women have gotten on well. Two has consistently chosen to pair up with Nyx on missions, and maybe you could argue that that's Two wanting to keep her gun on Nyx, but Two also took her on her side jaunt to find out what building it is that Two saw in her memory, and I don't think she would've taken Nyx with her for that one if she didn't like and trust her at least somewhat.

I was also glad to hear the Android say that she's not going to use the upgrade when on the ship, that she's keeping it for only when it's useful to seem human.

[Chaos Theory]

Quote

Three and Six were amusing but at this point the whole debate about Six's presence on board the Raza starts to feel like beating a dead horse. He's here to stay and the sooner he himself and Three accept that the better.

As of the start of this episode Three was the last holdout.  Two and Five are ok with him being there and Four is stoic enough to just accept it as fact until it isn't anymore.  Three was the one person of the original crew who just wanted to be rid of him.   I though this episode did a good job of having them deal with their shit so that the whole crew can be on the same page again.  

Quote

I was also glad to hear the Android say that she's not going to use the upgrade when on the ship, that she's keeping it for only when it's useful to seem human.

This makes sense for alot of reasons.  The biggest is writing because it separates her from the rest of the crew as "the android" but it also ties back to the previous episode where Redbot told her she had made a mistake while using the chip.   I can see that being worrisome to the Android.   Plus too much of Humandroid would get old.  I like both (all three?) versions of her and would like to see them as much as possible.  Zoie Palmer is the best.

As for the traitor, it could be any of them.   Android choosing her Android friends over the crew for a short time.  It could be Four turning on his crew for a chance to go after his brother or save him against his step-mother the real evil of the story.  It could be Three, who is a romantic at heart, who falls for an evil woman who evils.  Hell it could be Five who find her "real family" and for a time choses them over the crew.  It could be Two for obvious world endy reasons.  Right now we don't know enough and I am actually glad for that.  

Edited August 7, 2016 by Chaos Theory
Basic editing

[Terrafamilia]

9 hours ago, MissLucas said:

Also: how do the seers manage to organize supplies and fuel for their ship? And how do they pay for the drug? Are they selling info? And if they do how come they've not shown up on one of the corporations radar by now? Don't tell me by precognition.

The most direct way for them to build up their bank account would likely be by playing the market. They could also sell intelligence analysis to interested governments and/or corporations. They only need to make their analyses/assessments good enough to be reliable and better than any competitors but not so astonishing as to raise unwanted scrutiny from their clients. If they can determine how their clients would react to the info received they could end up manipulating them as well.

[Chaos Theory]

Quote

Also: how do the seers manage to organize supplies and fuel for their ship? And how do they pay for the drug? Are they selling info? And if they do how come they've not shown up on one of the corporations radar by now? Don't tell me by precognition.

I think you are trying to come up with an answer with minimal information.  I mean if you can tell the future and Milo isn't influencing your information then you would see an attacking fleet coming. With all those minds working as one and gathering all the information they could find the perfect trade route and the person to trade for them.  As for money and drugs .......who knows again not enough information to give a good answer but I would either steal it or barter information for it.  Information is the ultimate currency after all and to know just what your enemy is going to do next.....priceless.  

Edited August 7, 2016 by Chaos Theory

[MissLucas]

My problem with the Seers is twofold - first how is that supposed to work? They connect all those people from one planet who do have precog abilities. And then what? They need to be fed basic intel to come up with their analysis/precognition/prophecy unless they're telepathic. So where does the intel they're working with come from? Are they watching space CNN like Fouor does? Are they hacking space stations data bases? Second if they're as good as scenarios like playing the market etc. imply there's no way for them to stay under the radar of the major corporations. Especially not as they are an actually corporation project gone rogue. This would only work by making them much more powerful than they seem to be right now.

Yes, we've only been given minimal information about the Seers but the show wants me to buy the concept and I simply can't based on what we've seen so far (pun not intended).

[Mars477]

3 hours ago, Black Knight said:

I was also glad to hear the Android say that she's not going to use the upgrade when on the ship, that she's keeping it for only when it's useful to seem human.

It makes sense.  It wouldn't do for the AI driven android to outshine the rest of the cast personality-wise in every scene, now.

[CletusMusashi]

I'll grant that the ending was kind of strong, but most of this episode was boring as hell.

[sjohnson]

Most TV scifi reuses old ideas that, way back when, once had a lot of "As you know, Bob..." exposition. At this late date, rehashing that is bad writing. Or at least, it's hard to write exposition well. But it doesn't matter because people are already familiar. The seers are basically variants of the Seldon Plan in Asimov's Foundation series. But the original trilogy isn't that well known (or popular) any more, plus it is more or less contradicted by the sequels (and irrelevant to the robot novels tied into the series.) There are a couple other variants, Donald Kingsbury's Psychohistorical Crisis and Michael Flynn's In the Country of the Blind. For most of the TV audience those are downright obscure I imagine. So with the Seers, Dark Matter isn't relying on familiarity. 

But they aren't writing exposition either. So this relatively novel idea is thin, unconvincing, has no internal logic, no dramatic consistency. I imagine the producers think skipping exposition is Good Writing, but it's not when it's needed. 

[MissLucas]

46 minutes ago, sjohnson said:

 So with the Seers, Dark Matter isn't relying on familiarity. 

But they aren't writing exposition either. So this relatively novel idea is thin, unconvincing, has no internal logic, no dramatic consistency.

Thank you! That pretty much hits the nail on the head. I'm familiar with nanites and androids from other shows and so neither Two nor the Android's plot give me too much of a headache even if not every detail about them is explained. I know their tropes and the underlying parameters so to speak. The Seers came out of nowhere and there was not enough familiarity to skip the necessary exposition. And as mentioned several times now there were too many cracks in the underlying logic. I really, really wish Four had given Milo a detonator to take them all out.

[Raja]

13 minutes ago, MissLucas said:

Thank you! That pretty much hits the nail on the head. I'm familiar with nanites and androids from other shows and so neither Two nor the Android's plot give me too much of a headache even if not every detail about them is explained. I know their tropes and the underlying parameters so to speak. The Seers came out of nowhere and there was not enough familiarity to skip the necessary exposition. And as mentioned several times now there were too many cracks in the underlying logic. I really, really wish Four had given Milo a detonator to take them all out.

The problem is that the seers didn't come out of nowhere.FOX just tried to bring Minority Report to TV

[MissLucas]

Yeah, but it failed miserably and probably for a reason - I gave up after two or three episodes. And at least in the movie the precogs were victims not perpetrators so to speak. Dark Matter's Seers seem to be much more powerful and not hampered by their abilities at all.

[sjohnson]

Skipping over whether enough people saw Minority Report the series for it to count as familiarizing the audience with the idea, Minority Report was straight up psychic powers of prophecy, passed off with a wave of the hand as superscience. As were the Prophets in Deep Space 9 and to a degree Babylon 5 (the wretched Technowizards were a little like the Seers here...but I think they were very poorly conceived myself.) The big example of prophecy in print of course is the Dune series. The thing about the psychic prophets is that they are supposed to be infallible but cryptic. And any bad results from following prophecy is due solely to being a Bad Person. The thing is, of course, being cryptic functions pretty much the same as leaving the future unknown. 

Most adventure stories want their heroes to conquer. Having fate fight them implies they should lose. So no, I'm not seeing the Seers style of clear cut, knowable future that really does come true, not to be wished away by the passion and intensity of the hero, as something we've seen much of. I think dramatically it's hard to separate free will, doing what you want, from victory, getting what you want from what you do. Prophecy doesn't do a thing to individual free will.

[Wouter]

On 7-8-2016 at 2:32 AM, MissLucas said:

My problem with the Seers is twofold - first how is that supposed to work? They connect all those people from one planet who do have precog abilities. And then what? They need to be fed basic intel to come up with their analysis/precognition/prophecy unless they're telepathic. So where does the intel they're working with come from? Are they watching space CNN like Fouor does? Are they hacking space stations data bases? Second if they're as good as scenarios like playing the market etc. imply there's no way for them to stay under the radar of the major corporations. Especially not as they are an actually corporation project gone rogue. This would only work by making them much more powerful than they seem to be right now.

Yes, we've only been given minimal information about the Seers but the show wants me to buy the concept and I simply can't based on what we've seen so far (pun not intended).

One point here is that the "freighter" actually seems closer to be a full-blown corporate warship, much like the ships we met from Ferrous and Mikkei. Otherwise, it probably wouldn't be able to fight off the Raza, even with an element of surprise (or unwarranted restraint on the part of the Raza crew) involved.

Couple this with their predictive abilities, and they would probably be able to avoid and/or fight off any attempt by a corporation to destroy them.

If the Raza can avoid the GA and Ferrous for a long time, so could they.

[krimimimi]

On August 7, 2016 at 4:11 PM, sjohnson said:

[1]Skipping over whether enough people saw Minority Report the series for it to count as familiarizing the audience with the idea[...]

[2]The thing is, of course, being cryptic functions pretty much the same as leaving the future unknown. 

[3][...]I think dramatically it's hard to separate free will, doing what you want, from victory, getting what you want from what you do. Prophecy doesn't do a thing to individual free will.

1) Heh. Prolly not, or it wouldn't have been canceled. *sigh*

2) Interesting point. Been thinking about that, and have decided I disagree. While I don't think it's *always* the case, I do believe that *sometimes* having someone considered "reliable" making predictive statements (doesn't have to he a psychic - could even be a financial advisor ;-)), even if those are thoroughly ill-defined, will change the course of action. 

For example, characters who might not otherwise engage in a preemptive strike could then consider such action "justified," which would change the typical parameters of their behavior, thereby permitting such action. While watching, I immediately felt that the probability that Four would betray the others had increased, simply by having had Milo tell him that *someone* would. (Assuming that we both consider Milo's statements sufficiently cryptic. They certainly weren't all that specific.)

3) I think changing the accepted "facts" of a situation (for example via prophecy) frequently changes how people decide to behave. While the choice remains theirs, if those "facts" are sufficiently altered, they may not have been left with much perceived choice at all.

2 minutes ago, Wouter said:

If the Raza can avoid the GA and Ferrous for a long time, so could they.

Good point. I think neither Raza nor Seers would last long if the corporations decided to *seriously* pursue them, so the trick is to remain largely off their radar. But as long as stopping them doesn't become a real priority, there's probably no reason they shouldn't both be able to continue as they have.

[Wouter]

21 minutes ago, krimimimi said:

Good point. I think neither Raza nor Seers would last long if the corporations decided to *seriously* pursue them, so the trick is to remain largely off their radar. But as long as stopping them doesn't become a real priority, there's probably no reason they shouldn't both be able to continue as they have.

"Serious" pursuit would likely be costly, both in terms of monetary expenses (to find, corner and destroy either the Raza or the Seers, a large fleets of ships would need to be assembled) and in terms of potential losses. If they can set a trap it's fine, but having multiple groups of powerful warships (a single one may be overpowered by the supposed prey) actively searching for weeks or months is something probably no corporation can afford.

[Chaos Theory]

I think applying real world logic to tv shows is a mistake.  Plus it usually will drive you cray cray.  I can usually accept aspects of shows as facts when they are presented to me.  In theory I like the idea of The Seers.   Kidnapped by one of the Corporations and then rebelled and subjugated by their own.   

As for how they survived we can only guess and infer the answer at this point and we aren't   seers.  My guess is they did see others coming who tried to take them over and acted accordingly.  The rest is just manipulation of the information that is out there.  A rerouted freighter here a sudden info dump on your enemies weaknesses there.   Again I am guessing a lot but then we just met them.

[maczero]

So we finally get Nyx's backstory and it turns out she's a precog.  That's interesting I guess.  I'm still not feeling the character though.  She's just badass female fighter #46 and that role's already been filled on this show.  

Speaking of characters, does anyone feel that the Raza needs a con man?  The crew is filled with stock characters (badass female, plucky street urchin, gun toting outlaw etc.) yet they're missing a grifter.  I'd say give that role to Nyx but she's got a lot going for her already with the looks, fighting skills and precognition.  

[Raja]

7 hours ago, maczero said:

So we finally get Nyx's backstory and it turns out she's a precog.  That's interesting I guess.  I'm still not feeling the character though.  She's just badass female fighter #46 and that role's already been filled on this show.  

Speaking of characters, does anyone feel that the Raza needs a con man?  The crew is filled with stock characters (badass female, plucky street urchin, gun toting outlaw etc.) yet they're missing a grifter.  I'd say give that role to Nyx but she's got a lot going for her already with the looks, fighting skills and precognition.  

Come to think of the Android recently pulled off the short con and as an undercover cop, though he does not remember Six lived the long con. I guess as an undercover he was not responsible for building a con  however like often happens with this type of Jason Borne story there is always the question about  why skills have been retained while memory is not.

[maczero]

14 hours ago, Raja said:

Come to think of the Android recently pulled off the short con and as an undercover cop, though he does not remember Six lived the long con. I guess as an undercover he was not responsible for building a con  however like often happens with this type of Jason Borne story there is always the question about  why skills have been retained while memory is not.

I was thinking more of a smarmy type.  Kinda like Face from the A-team.

[Clanstarling]

On ‎8‎/‎7‎/‎2016 at 5:33 AM, sjohnson said:

The seers are basically variants of the Seldon Plan in Asimov's Foundation series. But the original trilogy isn't that well known (or popular) any more, plus it is more or less contradicted by the sequels (and irrelevant to the robot novels tied into the series.)

Once Nix's brother started talking about data and predictive analysis - I was "oh, okay - nod to Asimov." Which I liked - and since I read the series, understood the concept. Not precognition or prophecy as much as prediction based on large scale analysis using telepathic minds to link together as super-super computers. Though, if I recall, in Asimov's series, the analysis worked best in societal shifts, rather than individual actions. It's been a long time - and anything after the first book was a slog. It seems weird to me to think that Asimov's trilogy "isn't that well known" as this particular series was pretty important in science fiction back in the day (when I read it). But culture moves on, and foundational (hee) work doesn't always age well.

I kept wondering why they wouldn't use the Android in some way - seems like she's a wild card when it comes to their projections. Maybe they'll use her later.

I knew right away Tetsudo was suggesting suicide as the other option to Nix's brother. There's always that unspoken option, when someone says they have no other option. Not that I'm brilliant, the giant closeup of the knife in the apple gave it away. Checkov's knife. I didn't take it as deviousness by Tetsudo, though I can see that it could be. Sacrificing yourself for a cause is pretty standard in a revolution, and Nix's brother was aware that although he wanted to work from the inside, the likelihood was he'd be turned while in the collective mind.

Edited August 20, 2016 by Clanstarling