Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Putting Out, With Dark Sunglasses
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 9 | Aired on 06.17.1999
Kornata lays her hand on John's chest where he lies in the bar, unconscious. "Your wound is shallow, you'll be fine. Leave this place now, while you still can." She bounces, John follows, explaining that he's going to help Aeryn. Obviously. She doesn't get it. "You've gotta help me help her!" Kornata explains that Namtar's need for Aeryn is too great: "He wants to isolate your Pilot's multi-tasking capability through Aeryn; he'll do anything to get it." Because it's an ability he doesn't possess, yet. Meaning, John realizes, that Namtar's only ever grafting other species' traits onto himself. Another vampire. And further, John realizes that it wasn't Namtar that created the lab: it was Kornata. "I was the project leader. These were my research team: facility employees. We were working on theories of quantum genetics, on isolating...identifying the origins of intellect, the essentials of thought itself." That word: Isolating. The way even she, inside the story, shrinks from it. Isolated thought is no thought at all. "And Namtar started to use your discoveries on himself?" Kornata increased his "intellect." At first. "Then when he became smart enough, he began doing it on his own. He was a test subject." Bad science. RatMan. "He was one of my laboratory creatures. He drew genetic material from all the species I had catalogued. He increased his physical size. He gave himself the best traits of lifeforms from a thousand different worlds." And now Aeryn is his rat. "He used us all," Kornata whines. And is there anything we can do? "He controls my lab, all my equipment. If I'm away for more than an hour, he comes looking for me. He knows that I am the only one..." But, John shakes her, is there a way?
Aeryn hides in an alcove off the lab, her voice echoing: "Is it necessary to reduce me fully to the final stage?" It always is. Call it Harvey, call it Talyn John: it's only worth something once you lose it. "You are in no way being diminished," says the Rat. "You are being given a gift, you are experiencing a level of intellectual processing few beings ever approach." For what? "I feel what you describe, but...I am slipping away. I feel that, too." And so she will. Good line for the Rat here: "You must be willing to push off from the riskless shore in order to reach heady new lands." To look upward. It only hurts from this side, and that's the truth about apocalypse and that's the truth about being more. Especially and always for her. "But," she reasons, "As soon as my body reaches the saturation point, you will take the DNA features you desire and discard the rest." But it's not her body, it's her mind that scares her. He says it's going to be awesome and gives her a cup of something; a Pilot's claw (again, note) reaches out for it. And she's his, and that's all it takes. Princess doesn't suit her, does it?