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Even Jim's not so dumb that he's not going to eventually find the spy in the House of Taylor, but not before Skye lies to his face and enlists Josh to do the same. But Skye's exit point is discovered, and a newly installed video camera reveals Skye's outside-the-gate excursions. Rather than confront her directly, Taylor and Jim try to bait her with info about a convoy, which they secretly kit out to try to ambush Mira in the inevitable raid. But the attack never comes, which lets Jim realize that Skye's not providing the Sixers with any information that would put any colonists in harm's way.
As this unfolds, though, Lucas has completed his work on the two-way portal and he uses Skye to factor and reconcile his work using The Eye, which is just a bit of gobbledygook that doesn't have any kind of plot application except to make Skye make an extra trip. Anyway, Lucas's formula is apparently A-OK, and he's got big plans. Skye's finally confronted by the head honchos, and she comes clean about what's going on with her mother. Fortunately for everyone, Curran -- the murderer-turned-double-agent Taylor has stashed in the Sixer camp -- rescues her mom and brings her back to Terra Nova.
Maddy's terrible plotline involves the core in her "plex" -- the agenda/Kindle/iPod she uses -- is burned out and the material for a new one isn't readily available, so she goes through back channels --- that involve her asking the market guy with no legs, and then Boylan, who at first refuses her, then almost agrees to her offer to help organize his papers. Then he realizes she's the daughter of the sheriff and decides he'd rather not give the sheriff's daughter access to his books.
Anyway, Taylor's mad, his son Lucas (who, it turns out, blames his dad for his mom's death) has gone back through the portal with the threat of returning with the people that will depose Taylor and mine Terra Nova for everything it's worth. Going to be difficult to write the family Christmas newsletter this year, I imagine.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He wonders why the one guy in Terra Nova in a wheelchair has to bargain with desperate people to get a wheel replaced. Surely someone could help him out? Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.
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Hooray for pterosaurs that are only somewhat obviously CGI or whatever the technology is used in the opening! I'm easy to please. As long as there's SOME effort to show us these prehistoric creatures, I can be patient. It makes me think that someone might get eaten (Josh, I hope. We can all agree on that, right?).
Anyway, Jim and Taylor are at the portal terminus with a patrol that's there to keep an eye on it, what with the Sixers trying to ruin everything for everybody all the time, and the eleventh pilgrimage due in a couple of days. Jim and Taylor are engaged in the portion of the show where they tell each other things they wouldn't need to tell each other were it not to bring us up to speed, characterized by sentences that begin with things like, "As you know...." Anyway, Jim is still conducting "interviews" to find the spy, and there are a couple of soldiers that he's chatting with, including Riley, who visited the infirmary because her idiot partner -- the super-eager soldier who demanded a reason when Taylor went OTG last tine -- smashed her thumb in a rover. Jim's interviewing technique is barely above, "Are you the spy? No? Damn. Well, thanks anyway." And while they're there, you think maybe they could give the portal a coat of paint? The thing is looking surprisingly rundown for something so crucial to the future of humankind. And in fact, I find it a little surprising that it doesn't already have round the clock protection.
The interviewing continues back at the base, with Skye showing up for her turn in the hot seat. Jim asks her where she was during the time when the Sixers were communicating with someone on the base, and Skye is obviously lying (and I don't mean obviously because we SAW her communicating with them -- I mean it's obvious in the way she hems and haws) but Jim doesn't notice and doesn't press her on the injury to her hands despite the fact that it would seem the infirmary clue is the one to follow. We're too busy being uncomfortable over Jim essentially telling Skye that she doesn't have to tell him if she's fucking his son.
Over at the Shannon household, Josh and Maddy are getting on each others' nerves, with Maddy having a minor meltdown because her "plex" -- which is I guess what they call those clear electronic tablet computer things -- burned out its core, and her mom says there's a colony-wide shortage of the "promethium" so she's going to have to make do for now. Josh quietly tells her the name of someone, Casey Durwin, who might be able to help her, as long as she brings something to trade, because he won't be happy until every one of his family members is in trouble with the law.
So he heads outside to his new job, and he's accosted by Skye, who faux-casually requests that if Jim asks where he was at the aforementioned time, just say he was with her. He's intrigued by this, and asks what she was really doing, and she finally comes up with a lie that involves stealing copper tubing for a new still.
Anyway, having gotten the information out of her, he suddenly gets all pious about how she's asking him to lie to his dad, as though it's not something Josh does all day long, but she eventually wheedles a promise out of him.
That night, she sneaks out through the gate -- good thing security is so much more vigilant these days! -- and heads to some sort of, I don't know, communications outpost? Where she grabs a sonic weapon hidden above a grate.
Then it's off to the Sixers' camp to see her mom -- after she provides the necessary intel -- and she meets Lucas, who has a job for her. She refuses, initially, saying she works just for Mira, but Lucas impresses upon her that Mira works for him. Plus he threatens to throw her mom off the treetop camp if she doesn't bring his two-way portal formula back to Terra Nova so she can factor and reconcile the equation in the Eye, which will be a lot quicker than if he has to do it by hand. Not really wanting to her mom go splat on the forest floor, Skye's going to do it.
Back at Terra Nova, Washington's reporting to Jim (which I'm sure she must love) that she found a drainage ditch on her perimeter patrol that could be an exit through the gates. Jim tells her to put a security camera on it and double up on the west perimeter patrol.
And there goes Josh, offering his father a "Hi, Dad" as he heads of on his way to some sort of shenanigans. Jim seizes the opportunity to ask Josh where he was last Thursday between 7 and 11 a.m., and he's all, "Um, playing chess with Skye," and not "Um" as in "It's obvious that I'm lying" but "Um" as in "Let me think back." Where, asks Jim. Her place, says Josh. He lies a LOT better than Skye does, and he's on his way, but Jim looks way more suspicious. Possibly because "I got up at 7 a.m. to go play chess" is maybe one of the LEAST plausible things a teenage boy might do, let alone Josh, who you're always surprised doesn't suffocate to death by forgetting to breathe.
The day, Skye skulks around the entrance to the Eye before going inside, while a string quartet plays Scales of Tension. Inside, as usual, no one is using this amazing resource, so Skye goes in and plugs in the little USB key thingy that Lucas gave her, and says "Activate" and then all these formulae start floating around, none of which have anything to do with us.
Over at the market, Maddy is presenting a whole lot of junk to Casey Durwin, who is the legless bartering dude. He doesn't have any use for her frilly green scarf, old teddy bear and abacus. She collects them, but this is the only one she brought with her. (I find it amazing that out of everything she might take with her in a backpack knowing she was never going to see her home again, she couldn't find anything more important than an abacus.) She argues with him about how one man's trash is another man's treasure, but he tells her that what she needs is to find something that the other person can't live without. He says this just as we see his wheelchair has a bum wheel, so we know where this is going. She asks him if he would bargain for a new wheel, and he says that then they could talk. I would just like to know what kind of Colony of Assholes can't help out the only guy in a wheelchair by fixing his flat tire for him.
Skye goes to visit Lucas in his tent, covered with papers of equations, like a pre-electronic age Beautiful Mind. He calls her "Bucket" and asks her if it worked and does his own plugging-in whatever and starts creepily muttering about how he's so close, in a very brain-addled mad scientist kind of way. Skye says she recognizes the equations from the falls, but she never told Taylor because the area's off-limits. Lucas says their relationship is Shakespearean and like a Greek tragedy and I think he may have said those so the show can sneak a "Shakespearean!" into its print ads. She asks if he's always hated his dad. He hasn't always -- just since August 2138. "What happened then?" she asks. "Ask him yourself," he says. He's similarly unforthcoming when she asks what happens after the portal opens both ways, just shooing her out of his tent.
In Security HQ, Washington waves Jim over to watch Skye sneaking out of Terra Nova, which hits Jim so hard that he closes his eyes and lowers his head. How did she not crack under his rigorous interrogation? She wants to notify Taylor, and he tells her that he wants to "double-check something" first, but he doesn't say what. If I'm Washington, I think I'd say, "Yeaaaahhhh, I'm just going to go ahead and tell Taylor."
Jim goes home to ask Josh, currently Jack Johnsoning out on his plywood guitar, "You weren't with Skye last Thursday, were you." Well, it's not a question as much as a statement of fact. Josh hangs his head and admits he wasn't, but says she asked him to say he was. But he doesn't know why it matters: "I thought you were looking for a Sixer spy," he says. Yeah, see, Josh, this is why your chess-at-dawn lie wasn't the greatest idea. "Josh, you're my son, and I love you very much. But don't lie to me again," says Jim, like up until now Josh has been Mr. Teenage Honesty. Then Jim takes the plywood guitar and grounds Josh, which is both a punishment for him and a reward for everyone else. Elisabeth, who is barely in this episode despite being the most beautiful thing on screen apart from dinosaurs eating people (which also doesn't happen this episode) asks what's going on and Jim says he found the Sixer mole, and Josh has been helping her cover her tracks. Well, when he puts it that way, I think grounding plus guitar confiscation is actually a little lenient.
Taylor looks gutted by the news, but Jim says he's been going over her whereabouts and is sure. "I got a man inside the Sixer camp," says Taylor. It's Curran. Taylor says he'll get a message to see if Curran can confirm it's her. Jim seems surprised by the news of Curran's embedding with the Sixers. "After I banished him, I thought I'd make us of him, give him a chance to earn his way back to the community," explains Taylor. Uh, did it occur to Taylor, if he can communicate with Curran, to ask, "So, who from the colony keeps dropping in to provide intel?" Anyway, Jim wants to go round Skye up, but Taylor says he has a better idea.
Skye plays chess with Taylor. "Your mind's not on the game," he says, so she of course quickly makes a good move. Mark drops by and Taylor asks for details on the supply convoy that's almost ready to leave, and Mark lays out the details while Skye does her best to appear not to be listening. Taylor wants a gunner for himself. "I'll run point on this one myself," he says, and then moves a piece on the chessboard. "Your move," he says to Skye, and stares intently at her. You practically expect him to add, "...in more ways than one."
As Mark comes down from Taylor's tower, Maddy comes running up to him to tell him she needs his help getting a wheel so she can get the promethium core, and this whole plotline is ridiculous and pointless, but you'll be thrilled to know he offers to help!
On the security camera feed, Jim and Taylor watch Skye leave through the drainage ditch, and they lay out the plan that the convoy is actually a trap for Mira and the Sixers, just in case everyone watching is a moron. Although I suppose that if you're still watching this show they may have a point. Taylor and Jim lock and load and prepare for Mira to attack. "We'll bring her in if we can, but one way or another, this is going to end," says Taylor. He looks pretty pissed. Usually the thought of killing things gives him an erection.
So! They gotta great big convoy! Jim's got a team of soldiers hiding on the hills, covering the convoy in Devil's Canyon, but there's no sign of the Sixers. And the brief moment of tension when they think the Sixers are arriving dissipates when it turns out to just be a pair of diplodocus. Diplodoci? Whatever, I'm probably wrong on whether they're diplodocuses anyway. Brachiosauruses?
After hours waiting with no sign of the Sixers, Taylor's pissed and blames Jim. "I think they spotted you and your team," he says, but Jim just figures Skye didn't tell them about the convoy. Taylor's skeptical, but Jim points out that the Sixers have never found their weapons caches or even done any real damage on important raids. "She's giving them intel but nothing that would actually hurt the colony," he says, with Taylor wondering, reasonably, why she gives them anything at all. Jim thinks they're holding something over her.
Skye's over at the Sixers camp again, which she seems to get to pretty effortlessly. Like at this point, I think Terra Nova must have a halfway decent transit system. Where is the Sixer camp anyway, a half-mile from the colony? Starting to think Terra Nova's just not looking very hard. Anyway, Mira stops her to give her grief because she didn't give them any info on the supply convoy, but Skye protests that she doesn't know. "Your intel has been garbage lately," says Mira, who is threateningly pretending to let Skye's mother's medicine fall out of the trees if Skye doesn't shape up, which she promises to do.
Oh, sweet Jesus, the saga of Maddy's quest for the promethium core is interminable. She brings the wheel to Durwin, who already got one this morning, from Boylan. So Maddy goes to Boylan's bar to beg for it. He needs it to run his taps, but she offers her organizational skills in exchange for it. He's tempted, because the guy who's able to maintain two sets of books for legitimate and gambling purposes is suddenly a drowning-in-paperwork frazzled businessman. It almost works, until he finds out Maddy is Jim's daughter, at which point he just hands over the promethium core with a plea for Maddy to tell her dad how nice Boylan was.
Skye's back at Lucas's tent, where the closer he gets to figuring things out, the weirder he gets. In this case, he's pressing his forehead up against hers and telling her he's solved the formula or whatever. But he also wants to know why her nickname is "Bucket." She tells him she wanted to be a soldier like her dad, so she used to wear a bucket on her head. Bet he's sorry he asked. He warns her not to go back to Terra Nova, because it won't be safe once his employers arrive. "They're going to take control of Terra Nova, and if my father fights them, which he will, they'll burn it to the ground, with or without the people in it." Anyway, about ten more minutes of scene-chewing weirdness occurs, and then Lucas kisses her on the side of the head and leaves. So she's got to get THAT boiled clean now.
In Terra Nova, Jim and his band of martial law enforcement types have searched Skye's place, finds old, hacked maintenance cards, using them to access Maintenance Station 9, about a half-klick outside the gate. Jim thinks there may be some clue out there as to why she's providing intel.
Right now, Skye's having a good cry in front of her mom, who apparently didn't know what her daughter was doing. Mom squeezes her hand and tells her if she'd known, she'd have ended it a long time ago. She orders her daughter to go back to the camp and tell Taylor everything she knows. Skye's all, "What about you?" but her mom tells her not to worry, so Skye kisses her and leaves.
Jim and Taylor arrive at Maintenance Station 9, where they find a special holster that Taylor recognizes as Skye's, since he gave her a sonic for her birthday. Well, congratulations on acquiring even more proof that she's the spy? Then Skye shows up, and there is much yelling and pointing of guns, with Skye screaming that she's sorry and warns them that Lucas has completed his work. Shannon points out that she's been lying for three years, but she proves she's been talking to Lucas by mentioning August 2138. Shannon hardens, but he and Jim don't have time to shoot Skye and leave her for dead because they have to go protect the portal.
This may prove more difficult, as the team stationed there already gets knocked out when Lucas shows up with his little hard-to-open toy, and swipes his hand through some figure grooves, sending a shockwave from the portal and flattening everybody.
So our heroes arrive, guns drawn, ordering Lucas to step away from the portal. He won't, though, and points out that a sonic blast could destroy the time fracture for good. Then he launches into his diatribe about he's been dreaming about this. "Open your eyes, old man! It's over! I beat you! I won!" There's some blah blah about how the time they meet, Taylor will be on his knees, begging for mercy. Then he steps backward, the portal flashes, and he's gone.
Back at the Sixer camp, a shadowy figure approaches Skye's mom. At Terra Nova, meanwhile, Skye is crying to Josh about leaving her mom behind, and he does his best to comfort her, but their snuggling is interrupted by an infirmary worker who has come to fetch Skye, because who's there but Skye's mom, Deborah! Curran rescued her, and, even better, they should be able to synthesize the medicine. It's nice when the show remembers they can do stuff like that. Taylor's glad to see Deborah, but can barely look at Skye without appearing like he's about to vomit with rage.
Jim and Taylor debrief, with Taylor saying the Sixers camp has already disbanded. Jim's surprised that Taylor's letting Curran back into the camp, but Taylor figures Curran's earned a second chance: "Curran killed a man, but today he saved a woman's life," says Taylor, who then speaks vaguely about how most men don't get a chance to atone for their mistakes. He's talking about the mistake he made that his son can't forgive him for. "Somalia?" asks Jim. "August 2138. Lucas's mother died, because I couldn't save her. He's hated me from that moment on," says Taylor, adding that most nights he doesn't blame Lucas one bit. And now? We fight, says Taylor. That eleventh pilgrimage is coming, and hell's coming with it.
The episode ends with Taylor delivering one of his rousing Mussolini speeches from the balcony of his office. A lot of hokum about facing the enemy. "If we stand strong, shoulder to shoulder, we'll prevail." Taylor nods at Jim, Jim nods back. Their eyes say so much: I got your back, bro.
Daniel is a writer with a wife and daughter in Newfoundland. If no one gets eaten by a dinosaur during the season finale, he's going to write a strongly worded letter to FOX. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.
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