Nolan is taken to South America and found guilty of murder.

…Just kidding. Did you really think Nolan would be held responsible for his actions? Then you haven’t been watching the same show I have. Sigh… nope, a bunch of easily avoided mistakes happen and we lose one of the good things about this season. Somebody wake up Sukar, time to go soul-spelunking in the underworld!

I mean, I think we all knew last week that Nolan wasn’t going to jail. And given how reluctant the show is to spend time anywhere more than a few miles from Defiance, he obviously wasn’t even going to make it to VC territory. But I just don’t buy “brainwashed and crazy” as an excuse for peoples’ actions in this show. When I can show you a random scene of Nolan or Irisa brainwashed, and one where they aren’t, and you can’t tell which is which by the differences in their behavior (or lack thereof), well, that says a lot about the quality of their characters. Granted, it’s Kindzi who springs him from jail this time, which is not necessarily pleasant for him (well, briefly it was), but he’s still avoiding any responsibility for his actions. Now that the ark-tech in his brain is no longer useful to the plot, it’s promptly removed, and quite easily, by someone with no medical experience. Convenient, isn’t it? And with none of that negative impact on Irisa we were promised, either! See what I mean about it just being a plot device–at first it was used simply to force Irisa to stay when all her character development at that point meant she should leave, and now it’s used to excuse all of Nolan’s behavior, so that he can still perform the stupid actions required by the plot without it affecting his character in any way. Hooray.

Yeah that’s how I feel about all your plotlines, Nolan.

Anyway, we do get Berlin back, as she’s decided to return to Defiance to help Amanda after hearing what Nolan did, and is the one who rescues Irisa (much to her own disgust). She also helps Amanda put corpses out in the wreckage in Nolan and Irisa’s place. Everyone should think they’re dead again. Maybe next time we can just skip the “think” part and kill them off for real. I do feel like Berlin’s still not being utilized to her full potential yet, but we have 2 more episodes to fix that, so let’s hope they do some more with this. She unfortunately doesn’t have much more impact on the episode after that.

While allowing Nolan to even be in a situation where he could shoot a diplomat was easily avoidable, there’s another stupid plot development coming to fruition that could have been avoided even easier. And that, sadly, is T’Evgin’s death. You could say he died from showing Kindzi mercy or having a softspot for his… daughter-lover-whatever else, but it’d be more accurate to say he died because he couldn’t be bothered to de-brainwash Doc. All he had to do was pull the chip out of her neck, and Kindzi would still be frozen in orbit and Nolan would be headed off for justice. But nope, Kindzi straps him up and drains his blood to weaken him, and finally stabs him after he gets the upper hand and then shows her mercy. Kind of a lame way to go out after how much they’d built him up as a tough guy. He’s got it harder than Worf. So, now all hope for peace is lost, the Omec are woken up, and now ready to invade just in time for the finale.

Engaging in visual metaphor is an excellent way for Castithans to relax.

Over in the Tarr family home, Stahma has pulled out her knitting so that she can engage in obvious visual metaphors. She has a chat with Andina, who’s using Alak and baby Luke as a means of manipulating Stahma. And as they converse, Stahma starts to show Andina how to weave webs with those knitting claws. Andina’s pretty clearly angling to raise her caste by marrying into the Tarrs, although it’s a first step of a plan that remains a mystery. I’m personally hoping Andina is plotting because she’s aware of what Stahma did to her father; that’d be a great way to have all scheming this catch up to Stahma. The poor little handmaiden takes down the wife of a crimelord who didn’t think enough of her? Sounds like a direction this could easily go.

But we all know Datak isn’t gonna die, so the only question is how he gets off the ship.

Datak gets bored of waiting for T’Evgin to return and goes out to ask Doc Yewll how to kill an Omec–except Doc fools him with a fake vaccine and knocks him out. At the end of the episode, he wakes up on the Omec ship in a cage, along with Samir (who we all assumed was dead, so that’s another character cheating death) and many others being kept as part of a balanced Omec breakfast before a busy day of slaughtering innocents. You’d think they’d have something a little fancier than metal cage, but I guess it helps to drive home the idea that they’re seen as little more than livestock.

So yeah, I don’t know… last week’s episode had a lot of dumb points in it, but at least it was exciting to watch. This episode is basically just the culmination of all the stupid decisions that characters made and as a result is far less interesting. Seems pretty clear how things are headed from here to the finale, but I guess we’ll see if there are any surprises in “The Awakening.” Based on that title I’m gonna say no.