Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Believing The Strangest Things
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 7 | Aired on 05.07.1999
A few minutes later, Rygel's tenderly trying to wake Zhaan. "Wake up, you worthless weak shank of blue flesh!" The lights come back on, and Pilot calls out to Rygel. "Is anyone there?" he shouts on the clamshell, scared. "Yes, of course we're here," grumbles Rygel. "I'm been screaming my shunting head off!" Zhaan groans as she starts to come around, lights flickering. Pilot yells that Moya is "succumbing!" and Rygel says, sadly, "She's collapsing." The less people are around, the less of a dick he is. Which is I guess the point. Zhaan looks around, worried for Moya.
While Elliott and John bond over the childhood dream of meeting real live aliens -- and the relatively uneventful, kind of scary, mostly sucky reality they've both experienced at this point -- Lyneea's downstairs with a billion military lying up a storm. Ryymax hassles her about the phone -- which was the thing she dropped when she first saw John -- and about how he really needs her to get it together and confirm the sightings at Versant Observatory. When he asks her about her stinkface, she covers by reminding him how last year Versant's "definite UEO sighting" turned out to be nothing special. He hassles her about how excited she was earlier when her readings were going nuts, and she says she just wants to be sure. "Civilians have seen it," he says. "This is the day you prove to all of us who doubted you wrong. I don't understand -- when you first contacted me, you were extremely excited about your readings." She protests that she's still excited, but he says she's not. "You're nervous." It's true, she has no poker face at all.
Lyneea finally comes upstairs, and Elliott runs to her. "Looks like they're making us their base of operations," says John grimly. She tries to comfort him and sends Elliott downstairs to say hi to Commander Ryymax, so he won't know anything is up. John's like, "Does he have to?" So sweet. Lyneea tells Elliott not to say a word, and beeps his nose lovingly. She's really keeping this shit together. John's like, "How's that going to play out?" but she won't look at him. I don't really trust Elliott either -- he's kind of a nervous kid. "Look," says John. "There's a very good chance I'm going to get captured here, right?" And she's contrite without agreeing. He tells her at the least, he needs to notify Moya that he found the chlorium. She's still surprised by that, because it's just a common household ingredient -- like salt, or sugar, or cinnamon, or chocolate -- called "anlux," but he's like, "No matter how dumb it is, they need it." (Coincidentally I'm sure, but remember how anlux is an "atmospherically induced isotope of twinium"? It's pronounced like "twin" and not "twine," although I guess either is appropriate. Everything that happens here is an isotope of meeting Lyneea, John's twin out of all the planets in all the galaxies. Like I said, it's a coincidence probably, but still cool.)