Killjoys
Season 2, Episode 4: “Schooled”
Airdate: July 22, 2016
On Killjoys this week, the team find themselves trapped inside a school for the gifted and also happens to be the place where a certain important transmission was sent to. Will they discover who the data was for before it’s too late?
Read on….
Turin Discovers the Transmission Destination
The RAC senior officer messages Team Awesome Force right in the middle of a sparring session between Dutch and D’Avin (lots of innuendos were had). For some strange reason Khlyen’s massive data transmission was sent to Prodigy, a school set up by the Company for gifted Westerly children. Turin manages to them a warrant for the escort of newly admitted kids to the prestigious school. This institution is seen as a charitable act by the Company though it used to be optional for chosen Westerley kids to attend and now it is mandatory.
Collecting The Kids
One of the kids resides in Old Town so Dutch and D’Av head down to rendezvous Johnny since he is in the area to meet up with Pawter. They stop by the Royale and find it quite lively in comparison to the grim environment in the rest of the area. They tell Pree that they’re looking for a young boy who’s father used to work in the mines. The barkeep asks a woman named Sabine to come over (since she used to work at the mine cafeteria) to see if she knows where he might be. She suggests that they check out the east tenements as most of the mining families migrated there. D’Av is babbling about how it feels good to give back and he’s obviously smitten. Meanwhile Johnny’s left a message with Pree about Pawter’s exploits in Spring Hill and that he was tracking her down in the Salt Plains.
D’Av and Dutch find young Jake, but his father is unwilling to give him up. His older son had left for Prodigy three years ago and hadn’t been back since, then his wife died during the bombing and his second son was all he had left. The boy obviously wanted to go but his dad kept pushing him down and finally D’Avin took action (he hates bullies). He disarmed the other man easily who finally relented and said they can take his kid if he wants to go. Jake leaves with the killjoys.
Pawter’s Misadventure
Meanwhile, after last week’s episode Pawter has been kidnapped again. Well to be fair she was just held prisoner at Spring Hill. Johnny finds her inside a rowdy tent at the Salt Plains where she’s about to arm-wrestle a burly woman for her freedom (it’s Salt Plains law). At first things aren’t looking good for the doctor, but then by some miracle she ends up winning! Just as she and the killjoy are about to leave, they are stopped by Pawter’s captor/opponent claiming that Seyah Simms had to stay because she was a doctor and the other woman wanted one of her boys to settle down with her. Of course a fight breaks out soon after and the two friends use it as cover to make their escape.
Pawter leaves ahead of Johnny though he catches up with her in the jeep. Why’d homegirl just leave like that? The doctor explains that she’d found a plan in Jelco’s computer showing containment walls meant for cities all over Westerley and she couldn’t just leave without warning people. The younger Jaqobis suggests that she stay with them on Lucy while figuring out her next move because she couldn’t just walk to every town on the planet. Realizing he was right, Pawter takes his offer and they meet up with D’Av and Dutch.
What could the Company have in store for Westerley that requires containment walls on all settlements? The plot thickens!
Prodigy
After collecting two other kids bound that qualified for the elite school, Team Awesome Force and Pawter head to Prodigy to fulfill their warrant. Once they get there though something is clearly wrong. Firstly, they discover that Delle Seyah Kendry is running the educational institution and secondly it seems to be abandoned. Alarms go off and the group splits with D’Av and Pawter getting the kids to safety while Johnny and Dutch go to investigate.
They enter one of the classrooms and find two cryopods instead. Suddenly Delle Seyah herself shows up with a goon in tow asking Johnny and Dutch what have they done with the children. Confused, the two killjoys explain that they’re here escorting three new students and found the place abandoned. The matriarch of Land Kendry then locks the entire school down including Lucy. Dutch shows the other woman their warrant with Delle Seyah commenting that this is all wrong and that they’re not ready for them yet. The current class continues for another six months and that they should still be asleep. Dutch asks who else has access to the kids aside from her and it turns out to be the class guardian Malta Chambers. They also discover that the security footage for the pod room is missing.
Delle Seyah explains that she’s piloting a new learning program so it’s still experimental and hardly anyone has access to Prodigy. The two women face stand at an impasse, knowing that they both have their own agendas. Dutch realizes that the Qreshi royal has no idea that Khlyen sent a transmission here but decides that before she reveals that information she needs to know what’s really being done to the children.
Speaking of which, Johnny and Pawter work together to try to figure out what happened to the kids. He’ll handle the tech while she has the bio. They’re gonna science the sh*t out of this! We also learn that Pawter grew up with Delle Seyah and the rest of the Nine. Once they open the pod, the doctor tells Johnny that the kids were being neuro fed in their sleep and there is a strange gooey substance inside. After some testing, the doctor makes a grave discovery, the strange goop within the pods were actually the children liquefied. Yikes!
In addition, Malta Chambers appears and first takes the goon out and then announces via the school’s coms that Delle Seyah must pay for her crimes and go to level 9 alone and unarmed. They plan to use the head of Land Kendry as bait and then take Chambers down when she trips the sensors. Except when the older woman does appear she doesn’t trigger anything because she’s actually a hologram.
Jake’s genius brother Olan was behind the entire thing. He had sent out the warrant for his brother so that the killjoys would come he would use the ship to get out of Prodigy. Olan meant for the hologram to distract the others so that he could take Jake onto the ship with him and locked everyone else inside the school. He’d even programmed life support to shut down with only 15 minutes worth of air left until the ship was released.
Dutch and Delle Seyah head to the school’s control room to try and figure out how to bring life support back while Pawter and D’Av get the other two kids to the pods since life support is still functioning for those units. Meanwhile Johnny attempts to somehow get back onto Lucy. As their O2 is quickly running out, Delle Seyah decides to tell Dutch two lies and a truth. The truth being that the Prodigy program is a living human seed bank to protect all Qreshi culture and knowledge. Dutch comments that there’s only two reasons for a seed bank, winter or war. The other woman explains that would depend on Khlyen’s message. The killjoy ends up carrying the royal to the control center and is kissed by her, since she needed Delle Seyah’s DNA to reactivate life support.
Surprisingly it’s Jake who lets Johnny back into the ship after he realizes that something is wrong with his old brother. Olan was now willing to just abandon people to die and that wasn’t right. So he let’s the killjoy onto Lucy and the Prodigy student freaks out, threatening to connect certain cables to blow them all up. Johnny explains that Chambers was actually trying to save him because there was a massive data surge that triggered the pods’ sterilization subroutine, killing all his other classmates. All the data was rerouted to their neural feeders and that’s why he’s seeing weird crap and keeps getting headaches. Lastly Johnny pulls out the guilt trip and tells Olan that he’s being a crap big brother by choosing to kill them all instead of being there for Jake. The Prodigy student relents, realizing he doesn’t want Jake to remember him as a crazy person.
Before departing, Delle Seyah tells Dutch that whatever is in Olan’s head was meant for her and the killjoy retorts back that she needs to know whatever is in his mind as well. Dutch comments that if the Qreshi royal takes the kid to one of her people they’ll know what she’s been up to and she doesn’t want that now does she? Olan is safer with her and she’ll even share whatever information she discovers. Lastly Dutch didn’t hate that kiss. And with that Delle Seyah says she can keep Olan for now and proclaims they’re now allies.
Team Awesome Force takes the brothers to the Scarback Monastery on Leith to rest and hopefully remain safe. Alvis promises to watch over them and to help Olan unlock whatever is in his head. Regarding the skin scroll, the monk updates that the older uncles are working on it but it’s coded and they need the key to decipher it fully.
This will likely be the team’s next mission.
Khlyen and Fancy’s Excellent Journey
Back on the mysterious Black Root ship, Fancy takes out all the guards on board and wakes Khlyen up. The man still has his fancy moves and quickly eliminates his targets. After acclimatizing, Dutch’s former tutor tells his level 6 companion to set a course for Telen since it’s the Jaqobis home planet and they need to figure out what makes D’Av so special. Fancy warns that the Black Root will come for him if they deviate course and Khlyen says that they should make this count then.
Final Thoughts
- This is pretty exciting that we’re going outside of the Quad to see where the Jacqobis brothers grew up, possibly get more of a background story on their history and family. How did Johnny end up with the RAC and how did he and Dutch meet?
- Also I too did not mind that Dutch-Delle Seyah kiss, the chemistry was definitely there. I can’t wait to see more from these two now that they are temporarily allied.
- Is Dutch a little jealous of the attention that Johnny is giving Pawter? Mmmm…
Killjoys airs Fridays on Syfy at 9/8 central.
Images courtesy of Syfy.
