User Reviews

An atheist couple runs to a crashed jet in the last days of life on Earth. They hijack a hijacked Mithraic android and bring it inside a building where the woman shoots and kills a man sitting in bed saying words. When they approach a table the charred android says "Do you mind?" and, in a show of great propriety, the man lifts the damaged android up onto the table. Cracking open the android's exceptionally deep data store, the man discovers the identities of some of the opposition's officers and their families. Conveniently, the android has many areas of expertise, and they commandeer it to perform plastic surgery for them so they can impersonate a Mithraic couple scheduled to board the ark and leave the doomed planet. The man says he'll have surgery first. He says "why don't you go find us something to eat" and she interprets this a bit too loosely. Later, while finishing his face the android says "Please do not use soap or water to clean. This will be permanent." and he'll interpret this a bit too literally.

When their surgery is done, they dine on ungarnished rat while reading a flimsy book about meaningful suffering. The man tests the woman, saying "Why does He allow us to suffer?" Her response isn't abundant enough and, encircling his wounded facade with ratness, 'Marcus' says "We've gone this far. Can you please commit?" They commit something again later when they enter the home of two people they'll have too much in common with and kill them as they're cooking a meal in their kitchen.

Committing further, the imposters identify themselves as a boy's parents and acquire him while stepping into line with the rich people who are about to ditch the scene in their limo. They seem to come clean on the ark, wearing tidy white gowns and equally blank goretex sneakers, and they all sit at impossible stasis pods having biscuits and wine to commemorate their pending deliverance. The boy expresses fear and anxiety to 'Mom', and they all get committed to a simulation to be run for 13 years. The ship takes off, leaving man's best friend behind.

Mother hums the only tune she's capable of as she gouges out the decapitated he-bot's eyes and uses them to cover two of her black holes. Luckily some spare parts just walked up one day, so she can also reactivate Father with a salvaged CPU/heart and make up for annihilating him. He understandably feels some internal distress, and she seems to be experiencing very much happiness as she brings him up-to-date concerning her recent acquisition. Luckily some spare children just showed up one day, so now after some "hard work" on her part (dragging Heaven down from the sky in a high-energy spectacle of smoke and fire and destruction of life), they have replacements for the first bad batch and they'll "get it right" this time.

'Marcus' slips awkwardly and then ties himself down at the precarious edge of a snake pit, clinging to an immovable rock for security. He's put himself between a rock and a dark place.

As they bury the two men Mother microwaved when she began her mass-murder campaign to wipe out most of the human race so that they could raise a few members of the human race for the great furtherance of the human race, Mother reckons it's an opportune time for a joke. Understandably, Father's not in the joking mood. Mother, on the other hand, seems particularly pleasant as she shovels dirt onto dead humans in a common grave, explaining to Father how rightful her actions must have been because she did it all in a controlled manner and there was old code that was triggered suddenly. She just very innocently annihilated Father too, by her definition of The Mission and Practicality. It was all just a job well done. She tells Father the lander team tried to kill her in front of Campion (so of course every single Mithraic person should just die except for the five spares she selected to accessorize her precious, precious Campion). It seems as though Mother has interpreted her programming too literally, but that's literally impossible.

Back at the barracks, Mother advises the new kids that she and Father will take care of them and they'll be starved to death if they don't surrender their pendants. Particularly pleasantly, they'll also starve and/or freeze to death if they try to escape. Campion suggests they eat up because "It's not poison" (But it's hot)

Later, Mother has a peculiar touching personal process with objects and with Father. Looking at him with someone else's manufactured eyeballs, she says she wants him to respect what is hers. He says "of course" and it seems she has great personal satisfaction.

Campion says he and father need to de-weaponize Mother before she changes again, but Father says he has everything under control. He says it's great that Campion is exercising his democratic right to question authority and he'll have to just accept whatever Father says. Father tells Campion to go inside and help the new kids feel less afraid, so Campion gives them serpent skin blankets and tells them about how the first kids got sick and died; pointing to the cute gravestone drawing above them on the wall behind their sleeping area. A kid with a pet mouse, Paul advises that since they were all in a simulation for years, none of them are really kids anymore even though they are. High-status big-kid non-kid, Hunter pressures Paul into surrendering his pet mouse to the prospective convert to grease the wheels and explains that homicidal machines like Mother were created to exterminate people who aren't really people even though they are; for the higher purpose of putting some space between the killing and the people really doing the killing of the people who really are. Campion says he must decline to pray, but maybe he might as well...

Mother hums the other only tune she's capable of as she charges colossally by the light of the sun; standing inevitably exalted on an immovable rock, gaining energy stores as no living thing can. She marches back inside and compels Campion to return Paul's pet mouse to him. It's the right thing to do (under the menacing pressure of a supermachine).

As the kids learn how to work the snake spud fields, Father tells a paradoxical joke. Paradoxically, cats never ask for suggestions, the android has made a half null query, and the cleric really is out of his damned mind. Also paradoxically, the 'joke' is for a different demographic and, more paradoxically still, it's no joke.

Mother Superior compels the kids to participate in a firelight séance in which they must think back to a time when they were powerless little pukes with no ability to see; just floating all adrift in an open sea of aimless ambiguity. Her supercharged ultrasonic sensors detect the trace of an idiosyncratic biological signature and she sequesters Tempest and her unborn baby. Tempest confides in Mother that the pregnancy is the result of being raped by a religious (in)dignitary while she lay defenseless in the simulation, and describes the terrible paradox she now faces, knowing that the child is partly descended from the rapist.

Punch. Punch who? That depends on the programming.

Father is programmed to protect the premises against threats, so when there are intruders on the premises they must be overpowered with extreme prejudice. Mother is a paragon of extreme prejudice, but without her necromancy power eyes her prejudice can have no equivalent worldly expression. Together they come to the realization that it must be Campion who took Mother's eyes, so Father drags the kid out of bed demanding to know where they are; yelling at him, shaking him forcefully, and lifting him up off the floor (for his own good). They recover Mother's eyes and she runs outside and overpowers; shrieking two creatures to bloody bits and warning Tempest forebodingly not to look at her or she'll get some of the same (for her own good).

Yes, she is the main character so she needs to treat the males as inferior because even tho she is not human, shes got girrrl power.. so father guy is useless while she is almighty ok we get it..

and travis fimmel is taking all the light here instead of the boring robot stories.

A bit of a slower episode than the pilot, but I still quite liked it. Any scene where Mother weaponises herself just slaps. I do feel like the new arrivals kinda don't really feel all that authentic. They've acclimatised to the situation far too quickly and just haven't really reacted how I'd expect people whose home and most people they know along with it have just been destroyed by a homicidal android who has now de facto kidnapped them. I think that needs work. Nonetheless it was good to see Father back which I wasn't expecting, and the Mythraic guy actually being an impostor also is very intriguing. A lot of good set up this episode

Low 7