3x09, "The Small Dark Movie of Your Life"

[Elizabeth Bear]

Welcome, Caryn.

I am sorry it's under such sad circumstances.

[glinda_w]

Welcome, Caryn. Sorry that the circumstances are so sad...

[Lioness]

Hello Caryn, and welcome.

I like your comparison of Sol's voice to opera. That had never occurred to me, and it's really interesting to ponder.

[Jonsan]

Great episode. I really enjoyed the mounting feeling of "wow, somebody is totally gonna die" as the episode progressed. The tension was horribly engaging. Worth's death was brutal, sufficiently shocking, and made the world of SU much larger and more menacing.

Reyes and team continue to dangle one of their own on the hook in the hopes of studying and/or helping the gammas. Eventually a fish was going to bite. Every law enforcement professional of every stripe has to make decisions regarding the level of risk they accept to help others. Sometimes it all works out, but it only takes one bad day to make all the previous successes look like just so much luck. And if you ever need to know what luck is worth, just visit Vegas.

Given what Reyes and crew knew about this gamma I think they were criminally negligent with their plan. Singh was on a par with Hakes. He isn't a sadist (like Hakes), but combine his self-absorption with a power that's immediately deadly-ish and unstoppable and you have to nuke him from orbit, just to be sure.  After a positive ID on Singh I think a head shot (or three) was in order.

I'm not sure about grand conspiracies or puppetmasters, but if the Anomaly is, on any level, a creature with a survival instinct, then the first order of business is to destroy Chaz. The direct assault didn't work, so the corruption and destruction of his family looks like a good strategy. I'm rooting for the Coyote, but I hope he doesn't get real close with anyone else for now.

[DavidG]

Given what Reyes and crew knew about this gamma I think they were criminally negligent with their plan.

I'm not so sure. If it's a suicide bomber, you take the head shot; if it's just someone hurting and carrying a bomb, then there is a need to protect them from themselves. Singh seemed to be in that second category, needing to deliver a message to explain his hurt, and that the team could provide for. The twist they didn't count on was that his mythology wanted his message to be his last words, perhaps even his epitaph. Ultimately he was a suicide bomber, but everything about him said he wasn't, that he was simply hurting. Mythology won out over observed detail and profiler brain*.

* Hmm, thinks CM and Gideon's pre-series warehouse bomber.

[Jonsan]

I'm not so sure. If it's a suicide bomber, you take the head shot; if it's just someone hurting and carrying a bomb, then there is a need to protect them from themselves.

I guess I see their trust in profiling to border on the insane here. It's really stressful to confront or deal with someone who might be armed, but this guy can functionally kill with a thought. There is no reactionary gap, there is no prevention. Forgot about bombers for a minute and let's say he had a handgun. Young urbanites who don't listen he shoots. There is no way any LEO should approach that individual, completely close the distance, and then try to talk them down. The suspect's life has to be a lower priority than the LEO's if you want to keep your troops alive and healthy. With Singh, you have a guy who turned a family's tragedy into his own little downward spiral. He's narcissistic, an addict, and anomolous to boot. The team's belief they can accurately predict his behavior and then betting Worth's life on that prediction was over the top (of the team, not the writers).

[aj]

Hmm, all the newbies (like me) posting makes me think -- if Daphne dying is enough of a crack to create a bunch of Deltas, what if that happened to one of the high-risk in-Universe characters?

/0mewatchli/

She blatted the connection to Ha... to Platypus's iPad closed with a whisper of FIN packets, and just sat, shaking. Her head was empty; the Bug was shocked and dumbfounded too, or maybe just too busy doing backflips with glee to pile on right now. Blinked. Shook. Moved her hand to the keys and... and... let it fall back, useless appendage that it was. Everyone was dying. Closed her eyes. Now, even getting out of here... No more dancing with Daphs. No excuses for sneaky scheming cakes of sex and chocolate buttercream frosting. Who'd look after Chaz now? Is there even a point of getting out of here if there isn't someone who will enjoy Malaysian lion dancing with you, or consider the therapeutic benefits of teaching prisoners to be zombies... She could remember trollcatz's livejournal in a heartbeat... a tenth of a heartbeat... same as it was when she'd snuck a peak while grokking through databases and resurrecting long dead systems to find that damned ... gardener. It was all like a kick in the stomach, like cramps, aching emptiness. Frozen spaghetti monster, WHY? WTF? No, really, what the... Huh. Why was she remembering a "WTF" link on trollcatz's journal? She was sure that hadn't been there... But how can you remember something you don't remember? Where did it link to? A sixth of a breath later, and her mind pictured a blood splattered site that simultaneously proclaimed to be linked to the DOJ and flooded her senses with technicolour screams of anomalous activity. How? "Time for dinner, Ms Gates." No. There wasn't time left to work out what... but there was time to do the easy thing, to screw over whoever these friends of the ever-cursed Bug might be. She closed her laptop to hand back to whoever Mr Idlewood was today and traipse off for her standard high-in-everything meal as though she wasn't a supervillian locked in a cage, but before all that just one little thing.

And so, as it happend, a million spammer databases grew by a single entry that day: shadowunit.org.

And that's why the forums need spam assassins now, right? 

[jennygadget]

The team's belief they can accurately predict his behavior and then betting Worth's life on that prediction was over the top (of the team, not the writers).

I think part of the what happened is that they had added incentive to take the risk of trying to bring him in alive.  It's not just that they are the Good Guys and so This is What They Do - it's also that every new beta and gamma potentially leads them to a better understanding of the anomaly - and of helping both Chaz and Hafs.  Which is added reason for Daphne herself to take that chance; she needs* to believe that some gammas can be saved.

edited to add:  otoh, I can't think of any member of the team who isn't going to be haunted by that decision for a very long time

*refuses the write past tense yet.

[txanne]

aj: *applause*

[Emma Bull]

aj: More applause...and now I gotta go beg Hafs to CALL 'EM OFF! PLEASE! We're the good guys! 

[glinda_w]

aj: *still more applause*

[Emma Bull]

Really, it explains so much. 

[Lioness]

aj: More applause...and now I gotta go beg Hafs to CALL 'EM OFF! PLEASE! We're the good guys! 

The PTB do not want Hafs mad at them.

Actually, that leads to a fan of possibilities that are scarier than anything I've thought of so far, possibly.

(You guys do know the story about Robert Anton Wilson, writer of the Illuminati trilogy, right? He is reported to have said later, "If I'd known it was all going to come true I would have picked Venus.")

[CJ]

Aj rules!

Somewhere in the multi-reality SUniverse, this is cannon.

[Ada]

(Snip)
And so, as it happend, a million spammer databases grew by a single entry that day: shadowunit.org.

… but then when she had time to think it over later, actually integrate the contents of the website, she was even more confused....

On another topic, the team seriously needs to recruit one or more new agents. Hopefully next season?