Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch and Luke Macfarlane as D’avin on Killjoys. (Photo: Syfy.com)

Sometimes a TV show or movie reaches out and grabs you (Firefly, anyone?) and won’t let go. This summer many in the sci-fi romance community (including yours truly) have fallen in love with Killjoys on SyFy. With the finale this week, I reached out to Michelle Lovretta, the creator and showrunner of the amazing series, and posed a few burning questions.

Ms. Lovretta, a writer and producer, is also the creator of the series Lost Girl. Her full professional profile can be found on IMDb.

Killjoys is produced by Temple Street Productions in association with Space and Syfy.

Let me summarize the show briefly: The plot revolves around three space-going bounty hunters, featuring Dutch, the totally awesome woman who leads the team, and two brothers, John and D’avin. But that’s way too simplistic a summary, as the rich strands of family, friendship, history and duty bind these three complicated characters together over the season. I think I’m going to defer to Ms. Lovretta for the discussion of who these wonderful people are, and why they live and love the way they do. (There may be some mild spoilers for those who haven’t seen the previous episodes.)

 Veronica: What were your major influences in developing the series?

Michelle: Hmmm.  In terms of entertainment/media?  The movies Aliens and Outland.  Eighties buddy “cop” shows. And WOC action heroes.

Aliens was a hugely transformative movie for me personally and professionally, because it made me fall in love with space (and spaceships).  I can also see seeds of the D’avin character in Hicks, the übercompetent military guy comfortable taking Ripley’s lead.

Outland, meanwhile, is an old Sean Connery movie I saw bits and pieces of on late-night TV as a kid, and the images and themes stuck with me for years.  It’s about a washed-up cop sent to investigate deaths at a lunar mining colony that’s run by a ruthless corporation. It was the first time I saw the mundanity of a regular Joe “Earth” job in the exotic setting of space.  I loved that contrast, and it’s part of why Dutch and the Jaqobis Boys aren’t, like, space pirates.  They have a day job.  A sexy, sexy day job, but still …

Tonally, I want Killjoys to avoid both super-grim sci-fi and total popcorn.  So, we let our serialized arcs skew dark, make sure our relationships stay grounded, then pull the ripcord and have fun via our team dynamics.  That “go team” energy comes partly from my love of all things “buddy cop” in the ’80s (Simon & Simon, the A Team, etc.).  Those teams rarely involved equal female characters, so it’s been fun mixing Dutch in.

Lastly, Dutch’s origins — Ripley may have been my first iconic space heroine, but Dutch was never a white woman in my head, and I think I owe her inspiration to some of the amazing (and far too rare) black and biracial female action heroes we’ve had on screen.  Three characters in particular have stuck with me over the years: Angela Bassett as Mace in Strange Days; Zoe Saldana in Colombiana; and the incredible Naomie Harris in 28 Days Later.  I’m pretty sure my admiration of Harris is why Dutch always had an accent in my head … which is why I pushed us to search the U.K. … which is how we found the incredible Hannah John-Kamen.  So the impact has been pretty significant.

Veronica: Aliens is my favorite movie of all time and I certainly can see the parallels between Ripley/Hicks and Dutch/D’avin. Can you share a bit about the world-building process for Killjoys?

Michelle: I vividly remember reading about the company towns phenomena in American history class as a kid, and being disturbed yet fascinated by the blatant paternalism, social engineering and virtual indentured servitude into which some devolved.  Westerley was always intended to be a futuristic extension of that concept — a “company moon,” instead of a company town — and that dovetailed nicely with using the Quad as a planetary model of class, a de facto caste system in space.

Once I differentiated the four worlds of the Quad, I needed to create people who could breathe life into the various points of view of those trapped by (or benefiting from) the Quad’s political structure.  So, The Nine, Delle Seyah, Pawter, Hills, Pree and Alvis were born.  We used Warrants in season one as a way to give the audience an introductory tour of the Quad, while crashing us repeatedly into these secondary characters and letting them grow.

Veronica: I only wish we had time here today to talk about the wonderful supporting characters in Killjoys, because each one adds so much to the richness of the world where the events take place. What led to the decision to make the relationship between Dutch and John such a strongly platonic brother-sister bond, rather than romantic?

Michelle: Honestly, I just really believe in the beauty and worth of deep platonic connections regardless of the genders involved, and putting them out there into the world is important to me.  I often see non-sexual relationships devalued and underrepresented both in media and in society, and I guess I’m reacting against that.  I started exploring that “sex/friend” divide in my first series, Lost Girl, through the female best friends at the heart of that show — one straight, one a bisexual succubus who literally needs sex to live.  But while Lost Girl looked at the value of friendship smashing up against sex and sexual orientation, in Killjoys we look at friendship intersecting with gender.  (I suspect, in some small way, John and Dutch are my way for Bo and Kenzi to continue on their adventures. But, like … in space!)

The Jacobis boys (played by Luke Macfarlane and Aaron Ashmore) on Killjoys. (Photo: Syfy.com)

Johnny met Dutch at a time in her life when she was extremely emotionally messed-up.  She’d essentially *just* escaped a life of mental games, deprivation, abuse and wasn’t quite herself yet.  You don’t try to sleep with the Stockholm syndrome escapee, unless you’re an a**hole.  (Spoiler alert: Johnny Jaqobis is not an a**hole.)  They were both, to varying degrees, also deprived of happy childhoods, and I feel like that’s the common ground over which they first bonded.  Their inner 8-year-olds became friends, and there’s a goofy innocence and sense of “rediscovering play” to their friendship ever since that I really love.  What John gave to Dutch, for the first time, was someone who asked nothing of her in exchange for his friendship.  With Johnny, there are no red boxes.

(Note from Veronica: Red boxes are a key plot point in the series.)

Michelle: And in return, in a weird way (and amongst other things) Dutch gave Johnny the happy family unit he wanted, a sense of purpose and belonging — and a “big brother” stand-in who wouldn’t leave. (But let’s not judge D’av for leaving the family just yet — there’s more to that story, which I hope we get into if we have a second season.)

People are free to ship John and Dutch (like I could stop you!), but I don’t think I’m going to.  I mean, never say never, but it would take a whole lot of time and actor chemistry and changed storylines to convince me otherwise.  Unrequited love sucks for everyone, no shame, but that’s not what this is. Friendship is not always the waystation to Sex Town, dammit!  It’s a worthy destination of its own, and I hope we stay on course.

Veronica: Which brings us to the strong attraction and deep feelings between Dutch and D’avin, which are so integral to the plot — will these two be able to overcome their trust issues and start again?

Michelle: In a strange way, Dutch and D’av are just getting to really know one another, now that they’ve experienced their worst fears together through their shared trauma (D’av fears he’ll always hurt the ones he loves; Dutch fears that Khlyen is right and she can’t get close to people without becoming weak). Hell, I’m just getting to know them, in terms of who they are in relationships.  That’s something D’avin can help show us about Dutch.

Dutch and D’avin have a romantic moment on Killjoys. Or is it? (Photo: Syfy.com)

Is there a future for them, romantically?  I don’t know.  But I do know that they have affected one another deeply.  They’ve carved out a space together that John doesn’t share, recognize similar traits and scars in one another.  Luke does some lovely stuff with D’avin (in episode eight) where he makes him physically appear romantically nervous around Dutch, and that vulnerability really opened him up for me.  It’s pretty clear that he needs her on an emotional level, now, not just a physical one. And then Jaegar’s implant had to go eff it up, in two ways: It caused D’avin’s physical snap, and in doing so also took away the emotional security Dutch felt when she thought she and D’avin were on equal footing as killers. Now, to be honest, she doesn’t know what to feel.

I’m good with that.  It was important to me to deal with that messiness honestly. Often, if a character suffers any emotional or physical damage from someone who may be deemed “not responsible” (due to addiction, mental illness … werewolf), the victim ends up being instantly put into the role of caretaker.  You eat your pain politely with a knife and fork so that the one who damaged you doesn’t see it and feel worse. It was important to me that we not do that with Dutch, that we talk about what a sh*tty unfair additional mess it is when you don’t get a clear target of blame.  D’avin was absolutely a victim, and is hurting.  So is she. She’s never had to fight someone she was terrified of killing, and she hated how unarmed and vulnerable that made her feel.  Dutch essentially says, “It’s not your fault, there’s nothing to forgive — but I remember. I’m not obliged to pretend that that trauma didn’t happen, just to make you feel better.”  A large part of my drive to tell this story was just to hear Dutch say, “My pain matters, too.”

I think the FACT that she spoke the truth, and that D’avin understood without being defensive, is an excellent start.  Genuinely clearing the air and giving one another time is what’s allowing them to move on and rebuild the trust they need as a team.

Veronica: On a lighter note, some fans are “shipping” John and Lucy — any chance we might see something develop along those lines?

Michelle: Do you mean “is John literally going to romantically bond with his ship”?  No.  Because … no.  This is not Lars and the Real Spaceship!

But if you mean “is John going to continue to form a funny and evolving bond with the ship that is strangely loyal to him?” then absolutely, yes.  And if we were ever to have a storyline where Lucy is ported into a physical body for some reason, then I could see some interesting stuff between them.  Either way, I’ve always believed that Lucy’s programming was modeled on the voiceprint and personality of a real and existing woman, so it’s conceivable that one day Johnny might meet Real Lucy and feel an automatic pull.  That’s actually one hilarious-yet-makes-me-misty hypothetical last scene of the series I’ve pictured for Johnny, if Dutch and John’s partnership were to ever conclude: We see John offering a lift to a stranded woman, and we all realize before he does that she has Lucy’s voice.  The two of them riding off into the sunset would make me happy.

Veronica: I love that hypothetical ending! Will season one wrap up with a Happy For Now ending? (If you can tell us …)

Michelle: HaHa.  No.  Have we met?

Veronica: And we always ask: What’s on your to-be-read list? Or list of favorite books?

Michelle: My favorite book is A Complicated Kindness. It made me laugh and cry, and if you can get me to do both at once you’re a g**damn Wizard, Harry.  

I’ve had a shameful reading dry spell for a while now — I can’t take in other external characters or world-building while I’m writing because my head is too full. So I go cold turkey until hiatus, but I’ve been on a compensatory reading bender, lately: Next up is Childhood’s End, 52 Pickup, A Visit From the Goonsquad and The Girl With All the Gifts.  I’m trying to stretch beyond my usual genre habit, but it’s hard.  I’ll take recs, if you got ’em!

In the meantime, thanks for your interest in the show (it’s chock-full of lovely people behind the scenes who all helped make it happen) and fingers crossed for season two.

You can learn more about Killjoys, which airs  at www.syfy.com/killjoys.

—

Amazon best-seller Veronica Scott is a three-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award, and has written a number of science-fiction and fantasy romances. Her latest release is Star Cruise: Marooned. You can find out more about her and her books at veronicascott.wordpress.com. Please e-mail Veronica at scifiencounters@gmail.com about content related to this column. Due to the volume of mail, e-mails may not be answered personally, but all will be read.

I recently had the pleasure of talking with Michelle Lovretta, the creator of SyFy Channel’s Killjoys, about the eagerly awaited season two, which premieres Friday. We had a wide-ranging discussion, but I’ll do my best to summarize and share here.

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

First, about the show: The plot revolves around three space-going bounty hunters, featuring Dutch, the totally kickass woman who leads the team, and two brothers, John and D’Avin. In season one, a great deal of complicated and intriguing history was revealed for each of the main characters, culminating in a cliffhanger season ending, with D’Avin kidnapped and Dutch and John vowing to find and rescue him. Set in a highly detailed, mulitplanet system known as the Quad, the show also features a diverse cast of well-drawn supporting characters, any one of whom can hold their own in a tough situation.

After 10 episodes in season one, Michelle “hopes the audience realizes that twists and turns and a few surprises are in the show’s DNA.” She described the show as featuring relationship-based stories grounded in a fantastical setting. “Season two is an action-packed, emotion-filled companion piece to season one with twists and turns along the way,” especially for Dutch.  Michelle shared that early in the concept stage for the first season of the show, she knew episode 10 would create a ‘story debt’ and that she felt honor bound to answer the mysteries raised in the season one finale by the end of season two. She said some of these answers will be provided in surprising ways, and new questions will arise.

Of course! As a loyal viewer, I wouldn’t have it any other way, would you?

Aaron Ashmore as John on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Younger Jaqobis brother Johnny’s arc in season two will be “lovely, loving and funny, because that’s the essence of the character and where the character took” her. She feels he’s an interesting man with room to grow. “He’s not a sidekick to Dutch but is in charge of his own journey, and believes in, and fights for the things that matter to him.”

As the character Dr. Pawter Simms says at one point, “If you’re going to be a princess, be a princess.” Along the same lines, John and D’Avin are brothers by birth, so they need to fill that sibling role for each other.  “Johnny was always the peacemaker — in his family, on the ship, elsewhere, so it was only right that he spoke up to D’Av” about the sacrifices he’d made in response to D’Avin’s choice to leave home.

As for D’Avin, season two will show what “being at the ‘Red 17’ facility has done to him and the toll it takes, especially with Dutch.”

Michelle said it was easy to show what was planned and meant from the start for Dutch and Johnny, which was to be platonic best friends.

“What happened between Dutch and D’Avin around the middle of season one was organic to the characters, but injected with the science-fiction elements of D’Avin’s turning” into the emotionless killer. As Michelle summed the situation up for me, they slept together at the wrong time and now must deal with the fallout and detritus. “Both are alpha characters, gun-shy about each other now, and what happened between them, and what’s next.” In season two they’ll get to know each more as teammates and family and find out if they go together as more than that. “Are they soul mates or are they not soul mates?” was her summary.

During our discussion Michelle indicated she never intended to set up a situation where the “will they or won’t they” sexual tension between Dutch and D’Avin would go on unresolved forever (also known sometimes as “The Moonlighting Curse” after the 1980s TV show).

I got the impression throughout the interview, on various topics, that Michelle feels a responsibility to the audience to definitively answer some questions, while of course other issues and uncertainties arise.

I asked about Lucy, the ship’s artificial intelligence, and her definite preference for Johnny and whether there’d continue to be a rivalry between Lucy and Dutch over Johnny. Michelle laughed and said that might have more to do with Johnny being at the root of it all, implying to me that Johnny might be subtly influencing Lucy’s programming to annoy Dutch. John’s character does have a mischievous side!

Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

In an interview the week before with the three main Killjoys actors, there was much discussion by Hannah John-Kamen, Aaron Ashmore and Luke MacFarlane about Michelle’s love for science-fiction and grasp of the genre and how that gives a lot of structure to the show. I asked Michelle when she first found science-fiction and what appealed to her about it. She said her first love was mythology, then fables, followed by fantasy, and around the age of 10 she discovered science-fiction. The appeal is “making the impossible possible” so the storyteller and audience can have an “unfettered imagination to tell stories not rooted in the humdrum.” But as we talked, she kept returning to the fact that the Killjoys stories are relationship-based.

We talked a bit about the secondary characters on the show. I’m particularly concerned about Pree and the fate of his bar, the Royal! Michelle said she’s “blessed” to have characters such as Pree and Alvis and the actors who play them and “loves what they bring to the screen.” In season two she’s able to “allow them a place at the table as a bigger part of the extended family.” She explained that she enjoys bringing in secondary characters and guest stars and seeing how it works out, then possibly bringing them back for later scenes or future episodes.

Michelle said the expanding role of the secondary characters is also a challenge for Dutch this season because she’s “timid about trust and relationships,” especially on the ship. “There are benefits and costs to letting one’s walls down, but the only way to keep her heart absolutely safe would be to stay detached and uninvolved.” Michelle added, “Dutch is very unique, a very real character and a real woman (to me), who’s had past relationships, not all of them good, and many of these people are still in her life, or she encounters them, and that’s the way life is.”

We talked a bit about the fact that Dutch and Alvis had apparently had some sort of relationship (unspecified) in the past, as hinted at in Dutch’s dialogue with Senior Security Force officer Hills Oonan about letting her see Alvis in prison in episode 10,  where Dutch says, “You know our history.”

Michelle said some elements of the episodes in season two wrap up tight, vs. threads that may run the entire season. I brought up the fact that in their interview, the actors referenced various episodes in the new season involving warrants and how amazed I am that serving warrants could still go on with all the other activities happening. She said it’s a “fun mechanism to have the warrants feed the greater mythology in a clear way,” and resolving warrant cases can “provide opportunities to wrap things up” in the course of an episode. We talked about how episodic TV in the old days would start fresh with each new episode and pretty much none of what happened in the previous episode carried over to the new one. Michelle seemed to feel that wasn’t necessarily all bad, to have resolution on some things.

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

“Nothing is accidental,” she said, as we discussed a variety of small events and hints in early season one that paid off in a big way later. On repeated binge-viewing, for example, I caught that at about seven minutes into episode seven, Kiss Kiss Bye Bye, Dr. Pawter opens a drawer in her clinic and the camera lingers for a moment on items we learn later in episode eight are her drug paraphernalia. We’re shocked to find out Pawter, of all people, is addicted to jakk. Of course, jakk itself had been mentioned often in earlier episodes. Michelle explained that she and the writers love to plant these seeds, although they don’t always get the chance to develop them in one episode but can revisit them in later shows. “We can’t go back and put things in,” she said, so hints and tiny foreshadowings have to be inserted in hopes of being able to use them later. Personally, I love these and think they add layers to the story that are fun to catch on rewatching.

Hannah had mentioned season two, episode seven as a favorite, so I asked about that one. Michelle said she likes to write several episodes of each season and wrote episodes one, seven and 10 in season two. “Not for the faint of heart,” as she said, to be the writer on several episodes at the same time that she’s responsible for the entire show. She cited her staff and the producers for their support, and reiterated what a team effort a production like Killjoys is.

We talked a bit about the outstanding soundtrack, both the score and the music for specific scenes. She credited Andrea Higgins, the music supervisor for the show, with finding songs that “fit the show without breaking the bank.”

Since the character of Khylen is both a mentor and an anti-mentor to Dutch, I asked Michelle if she’d had mentors of her own. “Nobody gets where they’re going without Yodas along the way,” she said, adding that it’s equally important to mentor others. She stressed that if you love TV, not only as a creator of content, but also a viewer, you want good content to exist in the future, and that calls for helping  “develop the people that will come up with the content (you’ll enjoy).” Getting back to Khylen’s arc this season, it appears he’s going to be “complex and complicated as always, with the threads of what he wants for Dutch, what his other goals may be and what his long-term intentions may be, twined throughout the episodes.”

Aaron Ashmore as John and Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

I finished with our usual HEA question of what’s on Michelle’s to-be-read list, and she said Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. While she explained she’s also “trying to expand beyond her usual genre predilections, her heart calls her to spaceships and fantasy.” Alas, we had no time to explore her TBR list of 50 books, as she’s deep in Killjoys post-production, and our time was at an end.

A final word from Michelle on season two: This is “really a Killjoys season” with an expansion of the “fun, mayhem, romance and mystery seeded in season one.”

Sounds great to this devoted viewer — I’ll be there!

You can learn more about Killjoys at www.syfy.com/killjoys.

Amazon bestseller Veronica Scott is a three-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award and has written a number of science-fiction and paranormal romances. Hostage to the Stars is her latest. You can find out more about her and her books at veronicascott.wordpress.com.

MORE ON HEA: Check out Veronica’s 2015 interview with Michelle Lovretta

Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Note to the Universe from Veronica: If I’m ever in any kind of trouble, I want Dutch of Killjoys on the case. Season two opens with a reminder of her intense vow to find D’avin wherever he is, which of course she then proceeds to do in this episode.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

The first three minutes of Dutch and the Real Girl is non-stop action and stuff we really wanted to see — Dutch, John and D’Avin in full action mode, breaking into the Arkyn Red 17 facility, prepared to kick ass, take names and find answers. Our first hint that this may not be reality comes when Fancy joins them. D’Av is uneasy but can’t remember why, and we the audience know that Fancy was deep into the Level 6 process when the last season ended, so how is he here?  D’Av thinks it’s a trap, and Dutch concurs but says, “It’s only a trap if it works …” And then there’s a KISS between the two of them, with sappy music and pink filters and fireworks and my heart is going pitty-pat like crazy … and it turns out D’Avin is dreaming and humming under the influence of the drugs. The fun ends with an extra injection of the green nasty stuff into his back and a lot of screaming.

Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin and Sean Baek as Fancy Lee on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Cut to Dutch waking up on board Lucy, as if she’s heard him. Pree — looking very tough and wearing his version of camo — is there with Dutch and John. They try to penetrate Arkyn, first with a probe and then in Lucy herself, but it’s a no-go due to some nasty shielding. May I just go on record right here and now that Pree was in fine form all episode, even as new secrets about his past are revealed and hinted at? He’s a man to rely on in a crisis, even if he does rhyme when under stress.

Off they go to Leith, to see what Bellus can tell them about a ship-stealing gang Johnny’s heard of, and if there’s a warrant they can use to seek more information. Bellus is her usual sensible self, trying to get Dutch to be more self-protective. “Why are you always chasing dragons?” she wants to know. When Dutch insists on staying with her chosen course of action, as she always does, Bellus tells them about the Connaver gang, who had a shield that let them get stolen ships in and out of Arkyn unscathed.

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Next destination is Eulogy the Barter Town. To gain entry you need a known criminal in your party and good stuff in the way of stolen goods to put up as collateral in exchange for gambling tokens. No need for Bellus to create phony ID: Turns out Pree is some kind of multi-alias criminal known for unspecified types of larceny and mayhem. “As if you don’t have skeletons,” he purrs to Dutch, looking very cat-ate-the-canary pleased with himself.

The episode is intercut with D’Avin’s further travails on Arkyn, seeing visions and memories of a fight to the death between scarbacks and what seemed to me to be colonists or terraformers, a lot of tiny trees getting trampled, much green stuff oozing out of dying people onto the snowy ground, dogs, Khylen in the midst of the chaos, telling D’Avin he isn’t supposed to be seeing this “memory” yet …

And back to the Quad version of an Oceans 11-type caper, with Pree and John sneaking Dutch into Eulogy inside a large gun case so she can search for the Connaver shield in the casino treasure room while the two men gamble and allay suspicions. There was a lot of priceless repartee between John and Pree, pretending to be a couple, culminating in a faux fight where John eventually insults Pree’s mother and the entire casino of hoodlums is aghast. Mothers are sacred!

Meanwhile, Dutch discovers the shield is implanted in a “hack mod” girl named Clara, who also has a bionic arm that the Connavers forced her to accept after they won her in a bet. The arm, named Alice, is the ultimate weapon of infinite capabilities, and Clara agrees to help Dutch so they can all escape Eulogy.

I loved Clara, played by Stephanie Leonidas. She has the biggest eyes and the toughest attitude in the Quad, or equal to Dutch anyway. She hates the Connavers for what they did to her, she wishes her family had cared enough to rescue her the way Dutch and John are trying to save D’Avin and she signs on to get them safely onto Arkyn. She and Lucy bond. I think John has a crush on her. He keeps meeting these women who appeal to his nerdy, techy side — remember Jenny, the doomed Surrogate in the Vessel episode who wanted to be an engineer? Or the equally doomed, recurring character of Carleen? And now Clara. She walks away at the end of this episode, but I have a feeling we’ll see her again. I hope so! She could have her own show, in my opinion. Even Lucy wants to keep her.

Back to Arkyn where Khylen and D’Avin become reluctant allies once they discover D’Av is immune to the glowing green gunk and will never be a Level 6. Without blinking, Khylen kills the other people in the room and persuades D’Av to escape. “Stay here and die or leave with me.” Yes, I’d take the second choice, too. As they flee through the Red 17 facility, there’s some good conversation traded. Khylen wanted D’Av to be a Level 6 so he could protect Dutch, while of course being loyal to Khylen. Eventually Khylen pushes D’Avin off a balcony and later is captured by a group known as the Black Root, who have no hesitation in tasering him, sticking him in a cryo cooler pod and getting ready to ship him off for a long voyage to meet a lady.

Thinking over the blessing given last season: “And the roots grew. The seeds traveled from a home we’ve forgotten, finding soil on Qresh. And the roots grew …” I’m wondering if the Black Root is an anti-scarback order? Do they come from the original home, wherever that was? I love new layers of mystery.

Aaron Ashmore as John on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Lucy lands on Arkyn, thanks to Clara. Dutch and John retrieve D’Avin, and Fancy who they find along the way. D’Av eventually shoots Fancy to prove he’s a Level 6 already and beyond their help. (Quick recovery from fatal wounds is the big clue to sixness.) As Lucy takes off without Fancy, Dutch slashes D’Av’s hand — “hurry up and bleed” — and everyone is relieved when he does, proving he’s still all human.

Fancy apparently rescues Khylen from the Black Root by the end of the episode, or at least intervenes to some extent.

Clara refuses John’s offer of various kinds of assistance. She doesn’t want to go back to being a “Basic.” “My mods are me,” she says and slips away on Leith, even if Alice-the-bionic-arm and John do have a mutual crush.

D’Av comes clean that he lied to Dutch about Khylen’s presence on Arkyn, but it turns out she knew and decided to leave anyway to save them all. The episode ends with a big discussion about whether Khylen is all bad, does he control the RAC or is there a level above him that even he fears, what was he training Dutch for, was he trying to protect her … and, big reveal — D’Av saw Dutch in the middle of the Arkyn battle in his memory or vision, even though she swears she’s never been there. Much, MUCH more to come.

RANDOM NOTES

I loved the way John is fiercely dedicated to rescuing his brother.  “Genetically unable” to do anything else. I loved hearing D’Av tell Khylen he’d die for Dutch and Johnny. This is a tight team/family.

Unrelated to that, at one point in the episode, John says, “People, read a book!” For fun, I asked actors Aaron Ashmore and Luke MacFarlane what’s on their real-life to-be-read lists and here are their answers:

Aaron: Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.

Luke: The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen and Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of the New America by T.J. Stiles.

Some of the cast of Dark Matter. (Photo: Jan Thijs, Prodigy Pictures/Syfy)

On to the Dark Matter season premiere …

In Welcome to Your New Home, the crew of the Raza are dealing with the aftermath of Six betraying them all into the hands of the Galactic Authority in last season’s finale. Six is revealed to be Lt. Kal Varrick, an undercover agent motivated by his passionate dedication to justice and doing what’s right. Two, Three and Four are in the Hyperion 8 maximum-security detention facility on an airless moon and things go about as you’d expect — all the prison tropes come into play. Bad food, mass shower (sort of), ugly uniforms, gangs vying for power, work detail in the laundry room, sadistic guards, old cronies with scores to settle, solitary confinement, a crooked warden … a few twists, however, with Two taking trips to the “sim yard,” a holographic exercise yard for violent prisoners, where she plots with intriguing new character Nyx.

One and Five wake up together in a somewhat nicer room that is revealed to be staff quarters at Hyperion. They aren’t actually criminals, so they’re getting better treatment. One is soon gotten out by a high-powered corporate lawyer type and installed in a plush hotel room to await permission to go home. He starts investigating the details of his wife’s murder, in between visits from Felicia the lawyer (“distance yourself from those people”) and Darius, a smarmy corporate type who claims to be ready to hand the control of the corporation over. Nothing seems quite right to One, and the single witness who testified that Three murdered One’s wife ends up dead the very next night after One starts his investigation.

Six sort of floats around during the episode, trying to convince himself and everyone else, especially the bitter Five, that he had to do what he had to do. Didn’t he? Five doesn’t think so, hauling off and hitting him the first time they meet. As Griffin Jones, who plays Six, said in a group interview, “Some people are more hurt than others, and some are more forgiving … as with any kind of betrayal, you might forgive but not forget.”

Anthony Lemke as Three in Dark Matter. (Photo: Jan Thijs, Prodigy Pictures/Syfy)

Six has an old friend and fellow cop on Hyperion who fills in the blanks for him about the realities of their world. “Justice left the building a long time ago.” Six also makes a trip back to the Raza to check his personnel file, part of which is classified. He persuades Five to crack the code for him (she’s bored in the room alone and he gets her books and a tablet) and learns that the Galactic Authority could have prevented the planet from being blown up and didn’t, condemning thousands to die. He gets increasingly confused as to whether he’s done the right thing.

My favorite subplot this episode was watching the IT tech arguing with Android about downloading her files. This poor guy doesn’t know what he’s in for! Android isn’t swayed by argument, regulation, hyperbole or threats. More to come.

Two new characters are introduced — Nyx, a feisty female prisoner who goes toe-to-toe with Two in an early fight scene and seems to know her way around the prison system pretty well. Actress Melanie Liburd, who plays Nyx, summed the character up in a group interview last week: “a survivor … a strong individual used to looking after herself. She finds similarities between herself and the crew of the Raza … She shakes things up and wants to fit in, as she needs the crew of the Raza for reasons to be revealed as the season goes along.”

Anthony Lemke as Three and Shaun Sipos as Devon in Dark Matter. (Photo: Jan Thijs, Prodigy Pictures/Syfy)

The second new character is Devon, an inmate with medical training (possibly a surgeon), who we meet when Three is in the infirmary. Shaun Sipos, who plays the newcomer, had this to say in a recent group interview: “His insides are twisted up,” and he has a “dark past that haunts him, and at times he envies the Raza crew not being able to remember their pasts.” The crew is suspicious of him at first, and the way he gets onto the Raza is “a bit circumstantial.” He develops a protective feeling for Five because “she’s young and reminds him of his past.”

Melissa O’Neil as Two in Dark Matter. (Photo: Jan Thijs, Prodigy Pictures/Syfy)

I guess we’ll have to wait and see what the plots twists will be with Nyx and Devon.

As the episode ends, Six is relieved of duty, Five’s transfer to a group home is halted, a new Galactic Authority inspector takes over the case (played with appropriate smiling menace by actress Franka Potente of Run Lola Run fame) and the warden gives mysterious orders to his subordinate, which implied to me that the crew of the Raza is about to be terminated in various ways.

One finishes packing his suitcase and opens the door to find the real Jace Corso waiting, promptly shooting him full of holes. I really hope One isn’t gone — he’s my favorite on this crew. Well, whenever Android or Five aren’t my favorites. I have a theory about what happened to One, but it’s too soon to tell. He’s in the previews, or Corso is — well, someone with the face is!

RANDOM THOUGHTS

I found it hard to believe that Six’s old cop buddy would speak so openly of the real situation and the corruption in the GA, the influence, power and money of the corporations, etc. This loose-lipped guy should have been dead a few times over by now.

The warden has pictures drawn by inmates’ children on the wall in his office! One says, “My dad stole things and (is) in jail now. Say hi from Jimmy.” Why does this slimy warden have the kids’ drawings? I could invent a whole backstory for this. Probably I shouldn’t obsess over it, though!

In a group interview, various members of the cast were teasing how Three is always eating, and in this episode I noticed that’s true all right. Three also did his best to liven up the prison proceedings with his usual quips and humor.

Apparently, this season of Dark Matter will contain some big surprises, as did season one, and the addition of new team members will force readjustments in the existing relationships. Can’t wait to find out more!

Amazon bestseller Veronica Scott is a three-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award and has written a number of science-fiction and paranormal romances. Hostage to the Stars is her latest. You can find out more about her and her books at veronicascott.wordpress.com.

MORE ON HEA: Check out Veronica’s interview with Killjoys creator Michelle Lovretta

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Here we go for episode two of Killjoys, Wild, Wild Westerley.  This week’s story felt more like an ordinary episode to me, enjoyable but without the wildly high stakes of episode one, because D’avin’s been rescued and the team is together.  I’m enjoying the Jaqobis brothers and Dutch functioning smoothly as a team.

Hannah John-Kamen as “Dutch” ”in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions Limited)

I liked the scene early on with Dutch and her mirror. I wonder if she’s a twin? A clone? Something else? How did D’avin see her on Arkyn in a memory of 200 years ago? Nice dialogue between the two, with him paying her a compliment (“It’s a good face”) and her deflecting the remark with a comment about being a team again. “That’s us, the teamiest,” says D’avin, as Dutch leaves the cabin. You can tell he really wants to be relating on the personal level again, not so much as a team member. The writers are dropping in some odd remarks like that here and there — last week Dutch told John he looked “thinky.” The dialogue in this vein makes me feel like we’re doing Valley Girl of the Quad.

Interesting development at RAC Headquarters. Turin is still alive (although Khlyen stabbed him and dragged him away last season) and he’s not a Level 6 — the process for proving a person isn’t a 6 is a bit painful and leads to profuse red-faced apologies. Turin is large and in charge (full of his own importance for sure) and tells us that Khlyen and his people have all pulled out of RAC HQ. I’m suspicious of Turin, mostly because I can’t believe there’d be so little fallout for him after the encounter he and Khlyen had. But he duly, if halfheartedly, reinstates D’avin as a member of the team and gives Dutch the warrant she’s demanding, to get her into Old Town.

Aaron Ashmore as John on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

There’s a wall around Old Town, with enough high-tech features to make John highly excited — high tech does get his motor revving every time — until the wall blasts them all unconscious. Before it does that trick, embedded vidscreens reveal that Pree has even more of an exciting past than we already knew, having been a warlord somewhere once upon a time. I swear, that man needs his own series, with all this enticing backstory! The team wakes up in the clutches of the new slick bad guy we’re going to love to hate, Liam Jelco. A smoother, oilier, more self-satisfied and pleased-by-his-own sense-of-humor bureaucrat I’ve yet to meet. Working for the Company, he issued the warrant Dutch is trying to prosecute, for eight criminals in the Old Town maximum-security prison.

When Dutch and her team, including Pree, get inside the town, things are grim, with bomb debris and body bags piled up. And someone had the gall to take over Pree’s bar. That situation gets handled, with Dutch fighting the muscle-bound bad guy and having to comically stretch the brawl out a bit while D’avin and John search the bar. I think she could have gotten rid of that troublemaker in one-tenth of the time if she hadn’t been distracting everyone on purpose.

One of the eight fugitives is in the bar, but he kills himself rather than be taken in. He does tell them first that the other seven are still in the jail so off Dutch and the boys go. We find mummified bodies and a scared technician type who unleashed an “aridity” gas on the place to save himself. Officer Jelco isn’t happy when Dutch reports her progress, delivering more snarky one-liners, including my favorite, “Is there a comment card I can fill out?”

Sarah Power as Pawter and Hannah John-Kamen as “Dutch” in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions Limited)

Off we go to see Pawter, one overwhelmed doctor in the midst of chaos, trying to save people with no medical supplies and no help. She diagnosis the type of poison gas responsible for instant mummification and takes Dutch and the boys to see Officer Hills Oonan, whom she’s been hiding. He tells them more about the gas, including the factoid you’d have to drink a lake to survive exposure to it. All season one I didn’t like Hills, now I do, and Jelco (my new man to hate in the Quad) kills him.

Next, the team goes in search of Alvis. One thing I admired about this episode was how smoothly Pree stepped aside, installed in his bar again, and we picked up Alvis to carry the story forward. With some Pawter Time thrown into the mix. The Company has been telling lies about Alvis, blaming the Scarbacks for all the trouble  Old Town has suffered, and he is indeed “in a dark place.” I was so used to the smooth, confident Alvis from last season that it was a bit shocking to now find him something of a broken man, and alone. Kudos to the actor, Morgan Kelly, for the way he makes us believe this character arc.

He takes them to meet the number No. 1 wanted man in the Quad, and they’re parlaying, with Dutch receiving demands to convey to the Company, when drones assassinate the fugitive and all chaos breaks lose yet again. Sneaky Jelco stuck tracking devices on the Killjoys while they were unconscious! Fleeing in the tunnels under Old Town, Alvis is tempted to use the aridity gas against Jelco’s Spring Hills installation but then changes his mind and accidentally inhales the gas. D’avin breaks down the locked door and plunges Alvis into a convenient water tank, eventually saving his life and keeping him from being mummified. Some tense, wet moments there.

Inside Spring Hills, Jelco tells Dutch he’s “starving the rebellion” in Old Town and that he’ll keep the blockade going until the people realize the need for the Company and that the Company is good. Yeah, could be a long wait. Jelco is also keeping Pawter “safe” there now, dressing her in clothes and jewelry befitting a member of the Nine Families of Qresh. I can see her morphing back into her position as a “princess,” but with the intent to do good. (I’m also wondering if Jelco is keeping her supplied with jakk, since we were explicitly told in season one that there is no recovery from addiction to this insidious drug.)

We get this episode’s kiss, between John and Pawter. Yes, he’s surreptitiously putting a transmitter on her, so they can stay in communication, but that wasn’t a bad kiss. And in interviews, members of the cast teased a possible romance between John and Pawter this season, so we’ll see.

Dutch and Alvis have a quiet moment on board Lucy, where he agrees to help solve the mysteries of Arkyn.

One last encounter with Turin, who pulls them off course so he can have a private chat out in the hinterlands. He proposes a deal, where the team helps him find out what’s going on with the RAC and he’ll help them on their quest. (I love Turin’s hair, by the way. He should do shampoo commercials.)

D’avin, played by Luke Macfarlane, on Killjoys. (Photo: Syfy.com)

RANDOM THOUGHTS

I savor the moments where Pawter is all highly educated, techno-speak doctor, and people are surprised, as if they’ve forgotten she trained at the best school on Qresh. I have the sneaking suspicion Pawter enjoys reminding them she’s not just a broken-down jakk junkie.

All roads or space lanes lead back to Arkyn. On that note, at the very beginning of episode one, there was a flash of green under the snow and ice on Arkyn, so I’m wondering if the Level 6-creating gunk is native to Arkyn and is the moon maybe a sentient being?

I also forgot to comment on the new opening credits this season, which I kinda like. They remind me of the Captain Apex comic book subplot featured in a few episodes last season.

It did seem as if the Company has learned a tiny bit from past mistakes. Remember Sugar Point, the bombed-out town in season one? There was no blockade wall around it after the revolt was put down there with bombs.

One final note for this week, during a recent group interview, Hannah John-Kamen (Dutch), Aaron Ashmore (John) and Luke Macfarlane (D’avin) said that the stakes in season two are much higher and that there won’t be much downtime in the episodes.  Aaron said the season will be “fast-paced, emotional, on edge with the adrenaline pumping, juggling action, humor and emotion.”

Jodelle Ferland as Five in Dark Matter. (Photo: Russ Martin, Prodigy Pictures/Syfy)

On to Dark Matter and episode two, Kill Them All …

I wish my two favorite Syfy shows weren’t back to back, so much goodness packed into one evening!

We find out at the beginning of the episode that some high-powered executive with interesting wardrobe choices is after Five, for nefarious reasons as yet undisclosed to us. The executive keeps referring to Five as her “asset.” Hmmm.

I continue to enjoy the travails of the IT tech, trying to get data from Android. At one point he sticks a pointy thing in the back of her skull, but still doesn’t get what he wants. Android is one tough being.

The Galactic Authority special agent Commander Shaddick, played with smiling menace by Franka Potente, continues her efforts to get any member of the Raza crew to betray the others, take a deal and walk away, so she can convict the rest. No one does, of course. Personally, I have the feeling any deal she cuts would be broken by sundown. She plays good cop/bad cop all by herself, from one moment to the next, which is fun to watch.

Melissa O’Neil as Two in Dark Matter. (Photo: Jan Thijs, Prodigy Pictures/Syfy)

This episode made it even more clear that large corporations rule in this universe, and the GA is pretty much powerless. The Mikkei and Traugott corporations are trying to pin blame on each other for the white-hole research and the destruction of Eridan 3, the research station planet, with 15,000 casualties. Actress Melissa O’Neill, who plays Two, said in a group interview that season two finds the Raza crew “in the middle of a budding intergalactic corporate conspiracy … much larger than themselves.” I believe it.

The warden gets corporate orders to kill the three Raza crew members he has locked up and he tells his deputy he’s more scared of the corporation than he is of the GA. Of course, Two, Three and Four survive their moment in the incinerator, thanks to intervention by Gang Lord Arax. I’m liking him a LOT. He and Three are on the same wavelength. The warden says, “It reflects poorly on the command structure when I can’t even get three prisoners killed.” Wow, that’s a performance metric.

Along the way Six realizes he’s made a mistake and picked the wrong side, so he goes to Five and they figure out a way to rescue the others.

Two, Three and Four plot their prison break with Nyx and Arax. Three receives some help from Delaney Truffault of the Mikkei Combine, who downloads prison plans into his head via an excellent eye-to-eye transmitter. I like her — she’s devious and twisty, but she seems to have fun while she’s doing skulduggery.

Yet again the too-helpful cop buddy tells Six various things during the episode, including that One is dead. (Which I refuse to believe!) This guy didn’t ring true to me, not for the corrupt world they’re supposed to be in. It was never made clear to me why this person would risk so much to share information with Six. Oh, well, he dies in a shootout at the end of the episode, killed by Six, so I guess I’ll never know the backstory.

My favorite scene in the episode was when Commander Shaddick has Five brought to tell the Android to give up her secrets and instead Five has her kill everyone in the room. I kept thinking, so much for Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics! Evidently no one learned them in the Dark Matter universe.

Alex Mallari Jr. as Four and Ellen Wong as Misaki in Dark Matter. (Photo: Russ Martin, Prodigy Pictures/Syfy)

Four agrees to extradition to ensure a shuttle landing, so there’s a vehicle to commandeer in the escape attempt. He had quite the encounter with Misaki, the leader of the guards from his home world. I sense maybe practicing sword techniques wasn’t all these two may have done on the beach as students. Lotta intensity there. I hope we see her again because they strike sparks nicely and the brief sword battle was epic. More, please.

Five rescues Bubba the gun for Three — yay! Bubba is practically a character.

Roger Cross as Six in Dark Matter. (Photo: Russ Martin, Prodigy Pictures/Syfy)

Six is shot in the firefight with his cop buddy and gets dragged onto the Raza, mostly because Two insists. Conveniently, Devon has come aboard as well, sort of tagging along after Four (who got sent to sickbay with a possible concussion as part of the breakout plot). Since he lacks the right instruments and sufficient blood for transfusions, Devon says he can only keep Six alive for less than 24 hours so Five suggests putting him into the cryosleep box. Problem solved.

The crew watches a GNN news anchor discuss the death of One. (Nope, not believing it, I refuse.) There’s a nice little moment where Three squeezes Two’s shoulder in sympathy. Awww. I do like that Three is a bit of a softy at heart.

Anthony Lemke as Three in Dark Matter. (Photo: Jan Thijs, Prodigy Pictures/Syfy)

They’re out of prison and back on the Raza, although Android seems to have lost her mental link to the ship, which I’m guessing will lead to more trouble down the road. So many plot threads to keep stitching — what does Nyx want, what does Arax want, is One really dead, why is the corporate honcho intent on getting her hands on Five, what’s the dark emotional stuff Devon keeps bottled inside … endless questions to resolve.

In group interviews, several of the actors expressed what a challenge they had in season one, not knowing any more about the characters’ backstories than the viewers did, since “subtext and backstory are an actor’s stock in trade.” Now in season two they have more backstory to work with for the characters they play.

RANDOM THOUGHT

I rewatched the first two episodes of Dark Matter recently and was amused to see actor Rob Stewart as Nassan, a leader of the besieged colony, since he’s also Khlyen in Killjoys. Not exactly the kind of series’ crossover fans have been asking for, but still fun.

Amazon bestseller Veronica Scott is a three-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award and has written a number of science-fiction and paranormal romances. Hostage to the Stars is her latest. You can find out more about her and her books at veronicascott.wordpress.com.

MORE ON HEA: Check out more of Veronica’s posts on HEA, including about Killjoys and Dark Matter

EVEN MORE: Veronica chats with Killjoys creator Michelle Lovretta

SPOILERS AHEAD!

This week’s episode of Killjoys involved a lot of stumbling around in a mine on Westerley, intercut with Pawter stuck at Spring Hill, and major soul searching on the part of Dutch and Alvis. I’m going to talk about the two threads separately, rather than try to weave my column exactly the way the episode unfolded.

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch, Luke Macfarlane as D’avin and Aaron Ashmore as John on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Starting with Dutch and Khlyen having a tense confrontation, the episode quickly takes us back in time 12 hours to the Killjoys meeting with Turin. He sends them off to the Badlands to find another team who went on a low-level salvage warrant, got in trouble, and then more trouble as Khlyen canceled their call for help.

On the way to the Badlands, Dutch and Alvis have a few private moments exploring the fact that he’s thinking of leaving the Scarbacks and that Dutch doesn’t know what she has faith in anymore. When Dutch, John and Alvis set out to search for the missing team, the dialogue makes it clear D’avin doesn’t like having Alvis along (although he stays in Lucy at this point). I’m thinking D’av is bothered a lot by the fact Dutch and Alvis clearly meant a lot to each other in the past.

So they find the other team’s abandoned ship, but it’s been taken over by moss. “Moss in a ship in the desert?” asks D’avin. Little do they know at this point, but it’s merely the beginning of the mossy fun.

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch and Aaron Ashmore as John on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Dutch, Da’v and John find Tanya, one member of the team they were sent to help, and although suspicious of them, she does lead them to the mine where she says her husband and sister are. Alvis is a former miner, so he comes to help explore the mine shafts. Tanya reveals the warrant was to “salvage a monk.” At this stage of the episode, that doesn’t make sense to anyone, including us, but Alvis says, “The faith grew up in the mines.” Tanya insists her husband is trying to kill her, leading John to mumble about loving the missions involving “wackos in the dark.” There were many quick quips in the episode, including D’avin talking about “bring a monk to work day.”

The mine walls have a lot of what D’av refers to as graffiti and Alvis explains are marks to help “Scarbacks find their way in the dark,” which seemed like a comment meant on many levels. There’s a great deal of Scarback lore and influence in this episode, giving me the feeling Alvis was on a kind of pilgrimage back to his faith, or finding his way despite the dark mood he’s plunged into since Old Town was bombed. Upon finding a representation of a tree in the mine, Alvis explains all the mines have temples.

Aaron Ashmore as John on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

This one also has pits and man-eating moss creatures. Tanya goes a little nuts, the team splits up to chase her, there’s a cave-in, which is a given in any plot involving an old mine, right? John goes back to Lucy to get equipment to break through the mine wall and rescue the others. Dutch tells Johnny to do an analysis, because that makes it all better. He demurs, not being a “mossologist,” but of course does embark on figuring the creatures out in his downtime while breaking through the mine wall and worrying about Pawter, stuck in Spring Hill. He deduces that mossipedes have a hive mind, are very smart and may have psychotropic venom, which they use to drive people crazy and cause them to fall into pits to be eaten. Oh, and even if you cut one up, all the parts survive. Mr. Spock couldn’t have done it better! D’av adds to the analysis by stomping one, which results in green goo going everywhere. D’av believes this is the stuff that makes Level 6’s.

Dutch ends up on her own in the mine, falls into one of the pits and sees Khlyen. He taunts her that she’s already been turned into a Level 6, a long time ago, and doesn’t she ever wonder why, if she was a “normal child with normal feelings,” she was willing to kill all those people per his orders? Then she sees her double again, who insists they were Khlyen’s puppets and never really escaped, as Dutch used to believe she had. “He molded us, shaped us, made us just like him … we hurt everyone we love.”

At this point, my theory is that the mossipede venom makes a person visualize their worst fears and we’re getting the download of Dutch’s terrors, with hurting the people she cares about at the very top. We’re probably getting misdirected a bit, because TV show writers love to do that to viewers, but I’m again thinking Dutch has a twin. Or perhaps she’s a clone? Maybe the woman D’avin saw in the 200-year-old memories of Arkyn is the woman she’s been cloned from? I’d better wait and let the writers unfold their story rather than embarrass myself with wild speculation!

Meanwhile, Alvis has also gone off on his own and found an entombed, mummified monk. He takes the monk’s ceremonial knife, having given his to Dutch earlier, and a piece of parchment with symbols.

In the pit, Dutch is so freaked that she slices her own stomach open. She’s terrified of killing the people she cares about. Everyone converges on the pit where Dutch is and Alvis talks her down, reminding her that she bleeds, unlike Khlyen, and also that he won’t leave the mine without her, so if she wants him to live, she has to live. It was interesting to watch D’avin during all this. He’s clearly grateful Alvis can talk her out of her panic, but I’m sure he wishes he was the one who could have reached her. D’avin is, however, the one with the power to repel the mossipedes. “I don’t think they like me.” Not at all!

Back on Lucy later, D’avin and Alvis are both going to Dutch’s cabin, but D’av yields to Alvis. I love the acting job Luke MacFarlane is doing in these moments, showing so much with just expression and body language. Alvis goes inside as D’av walks off, finding Dutch playing her harp, which to my knowledge she hasn’t touched in a long time. Dutch reveals that she’s had a major epiphany and is going to stop running away from what she really is — a weapon. Alvis shows her the scroll and explains again about the part in Scarback scriptures where 12 monks went to Arkyn to fight the devil. The parchment he took from the entombed monk reveals one monk came back. He intends to go to Leith where the other old scriptures are and see what else he can learn.

Lucy interrupts what is about to be a very cozy moment and kiss between the two of them. She’s analyzed the big data burst from Arkyn which occurred right before Red 17 was destroyed. Must love Lucy’s timing.

And we’re back to Turin’s tent, with Dutch confronting him about the data burst from Arkyn, which he says he omitted to mention because it was encrypted. She’s laying down the law, that she’s done being anybody’s puppet, tired of “other people’s decisions ruling her life,” done taking orders and will “be in touch.” I almost heard echoes of “I’ll be back” there.

Returning now to the Pawter subplot in the episode, I thought we saw a very interesting side of the princess doctor. She’s every bit as capable of cold-blooded action as any other member of the Nine Families, killing a guard and surgically implanting her explosive ankle bracelet around Jelco’s genetically damaged heart, when given the chance during his required treatment. Using the DNA in his blood for access to all kinds of devices, she pulls up maps of not only the wall around Old Town, but planned walls around all the other towns. I’m wondering if they’re for isolating the citizens, or protecting them from something else? Pawter seems very motivated to try to solve the big issues affecting the Quad, telling Jelco he’s only the symptom and she has to treat the disease. She escapes Spring Town but gets mugged by a person unknown on the way to Old Town.

We got some insight into Jelco, too, who seems to be driven by the fact that he’s from a “lower family” and that on Qresh Pawter wouldn’t even look at him, but on Westerley she has to obey him. I still don’t like him, but at least he has motivation.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

Why isn’t Johnny immune to the green space goo, like D’avin? And why is D’av so special?

Who issued the original salvage warrant? Who’s working against Khlyen?

Anyone else find it amusing to have a character in a sci-fi show go off on a fishing trip? It just strikes me as funny every time the action turns to Turin, camping out by the lake. Of course in the broader sense, all of them are on a “fishing expedition” for answers.

The first time the group enters the mine, I thought, Wow, this set would have done 1960s Star Trek proud. I got used to it as the episode went on, but I did kind of expect the Horta to scuttle through at any moment.

In the group interview a few weeks ago, the actors mentioned what a pleasure it was to have episodes taking place outside again. It must be fun driving through the Northern Badlands of Westerley!

If Lucy tells you she did a soil analysis — or any analysis with interesting results — I think it would be wise to listen! But Johnny’s in too much of a rush.

And Lucy tells Pawter she’s sensing signs of a psychological obsession with Johnny — is that Lucy speak for love? Or is Lucy jealous?

WHO is keeping Pawter supplied with jakk right now? That’s the kind of thing I’d expect Jelco to throw in her face but he hasn’t as of yet.

I’m wondering about D’avin’s line, “Once we get out of Qresh’s shadow …” Does that have some deep meaning besides just the sun becoming brighter?

Did you catch the moment when John realizes Dutch has been talking to Lucy without involving him, and Dutch reminds him that Lucy is her ship? Little bite of reality check there.

And the subtext of Alvis taking Da’vin’s shirt to wear — loved it. As well as the fact that it’s very red. I’m constantly on the alert for these touches of red.

Alex Mallari Jr. as Four and Anthony Lemke as Three on Dark Matter. (Photo: Christos Kalohoridis, Prodigy Pictures/Syfy)

On to Dark Matter and episode three, I’ve Seen the Other Side of You …

This show also began with a flash-forward, of Five running through the Raza trying to escape Three and Four, who clearly don’t recognize her.

When we return to events of 10 hours earlier, Two and Three are talking about the death of One, how he knew that Three was accused of his wife’s murder, yet didn’t act on the knowledge because the ship and the team were all he had. Two is tired of being a puppet and Three asks if they’re going to take on all the corporations, which does seem to be the direction the show is going.

Jodelle Ferland as Five in Dark Matter. (Photo: Russ Martin, Prodigy Pictures/Syfy)

The big picture of this episode was that Android has to shut down for repairs (of course she does) and in the process sets the ship’s computer searching for active neural links. What it finds are the real memories of Two, Three and Four, who revert to their original selves after suffering the worst migraines in the galaxy. The actors did a wonderful job of showing us what cold-blooded, nasty people the original mercenaries were before losing their memories. Poor Five is left trying to recall them to their newer, “better” selves. In the process she activates Android’s Default Settings Mode (who helpfully wears a red jumpsuit versus the blue one our beloved “real” Android wears) to ask for advice. I was fascinated by how cold and unsympathetic Ms. Default was, much like the original personalities of the crew. But she did have a knack for asking the right — if unpleasant — questions, often in rapid-fire succession.

During the episode we learn that Arax is the asset the corporate bigwig who’s after Five was talking about having on the Raza. One tiny mystery solved, but of course the bigger ones remain.

I found the team dynamics interesting. We had Two, Three and Four going up against Arax, Nyx and Devon. The Raza crew trusts each other, even in their original personality setting, but the newcomers are only linked by circumstance. Although each of the three seems to be trying to be seen as a reasonable, nice person, I have a feeling you don’t end up in maximum-security detention facilities for jaywalking. There must be a great deal to learn about all three of them and their motives. Five trusts them probably more than she should in this episode, but she’s desperate.

Melissa O’Neil as Two in Dark Matter. (Photo: Jan Thijs, Prodigy Pictures/Syfy)

Two starts linking to the ship the way the Android does and for her it’s a big-time rush of euphoria and power. If she completes the linkup, she’ll be able to circumvent the few things Five can still do manually.

Five keeps trying to convince Three and Four that they aren’t these nasty people anymore and reveals to a shocked Three that she knows all about Sarah, the woman he loved, and that she’s dead. That plus the fact that 14 months of time are missing for Two, Three and Four helps to plant some doubt in their minds.

We find out along the way that the computer’s actions walled off the new memories from the old memories. Five can still access everyone’s full personality profiles, new and old, so she starts a neural link and confronts Two in a memory of the worst time in her life, when she was at her lowest and most powerless, afraid and alone. Five has all the power there and for a heady moment is beating Two up, but at the last moment uses her own empathy and caring instead to help Two break the link with the ship and return to her new, better self.

At the end of the episode, Two, Three and Four debate accessing their old memories while keeping the new ones, which could be done through the computer, but Five and Android point out they’d be different people again, with the old habits and patterns taking over, so they decide not to take the risk … for now.

Three and Five have a nice moment where she brings him the mementos of Sarah he’s forgotten again … and then he triggers some device while examining the rest of what’s in the lockbox … and we close on a quick scene of scurrilous guys in a dive bar somewhere, excitedly talking about getting a signal from Marcus Boone.

Trouble ahead!

RANDOM THOUGHTS

Why didn’t the “old style” Two, Three and Four ever ask where One and Six were?

If Arax is trying to sell you a wonderful new base as a hideout, he probably has a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you, too. Watch out!

How did Nyx get out of the sealed compartment to go steal Three’s guns?

If there’s such a pitched gun battle on board the ship, why no damage?

The graphics for the neural link between Two and the ship reminded me of the movie Johnny Mnemonic.

I love to see what Five is wearing each episode. I wonder if there’s a deeper meaning to her fondness for wild prints, patterns and layering?

Amazon bestseller Veronica Scott is a three-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award and has written a number of science-fiction and paranormal romances. Hostage to the Stars is her latest. You can find out more about her and her books at veronicascott.wordpress.com.

MORE ON HEA: Check out more of Veronica’s posts on HEA, including about Killjoys and Dark Matter

EVEN MORE: Veronica chats with Killjoys creator Michelle Lovretta

SPOILERS AHEAD!

What’s not to like about how Schooled, this week’s episode of Killjoys, began, with D’avin and Dutch having a sexy mock combat scene? I couldn’t take it seriously as a practice for actual hand-to-hand combat. Too slow, too many missed opportunities. Practice for something else maybe! But I did enjoy the dialogue as they wrestled, and I appreciated the fact the characters are comfortable enough with each other to roughhouse again. (I’d rather see them dance again, but hey, that’s me.)

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

“You and me are complicated,” says D’avin. “Alvis is simple. If stuff happens, we’re good.” I’m thinking to myself, who the heck are you to give permission, which Dutch didn’t ask for and doesn’t need? But I did like his cocky grin. D’av doesn’t lack for self-confidence.

And then Lucy turns on the monitors to take an incoming call from Turin. Is it just me or has Lucy gotten really snarky about interrupting interesting moments? “Timing, Lucy, timing,” as D’avin says. Oh, she has it, just not in a way the humans appreciate. Turin says Khlyen’s big Arkyn and Red 17 data burst went to a school.

Tori Anderson as Sabine on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Off we go to Old Town to handle a low-level warrant to escort some kids to this special school, with a stop for Dutch and D’avin at Pree’s. Always glad to see him, and he was certainly in a good mood, with the place booming. D’avin got several eyefuls of new barmaid Sabine, much to the shared amusement of Pree and Dutch. We got a few more insights while in Old Town — Dutch isn’t comfortable with kids, for one. I remember a flashback moment last season when she was a child and told Khlyen the other girls in the harem were bullying her. Plus, she didn’t get to have a normal childhood, by any standard.

D’avin can’t stand a bully. Which the father of Jake, the boy they’re supposed to be escorting to Prodigy school, definitely is. To be fair, the father made a few good points, about the Company stealing their kids, but he was such an unpleasant guy, it was hard to give him credit for anything.

I could just see D’av having flashbacks to his own abusive father and childhood. One of the major themes running through this episode was brotherhood and what it means to be brothers and have each other’s back in any situation. I was glad to see John and D’av on pretty good terms with each other throughout the entire show, and even able to joke a bit about the whole stabbing incident last season.

Another key conversation in this visit to Old Town was Dutch worrying that Johnny’s determination to help Pawter would take away his concentration on Dutch’s quest to settle the Khlyen/Arkyn situation once and for all. “You lead, I shoot, Johnny gives a sh*t,” D’avin says by way of telling her John is who he is and does she really want to try to change him? The showrunner and actors have given teasers in interviews that Johnny may make some choices this season that Dutch has a hard time accepting — I have a feeling we might be seeing the seeds of this problem developing now.

Aaron Ashmore as John on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Speaking of John, he’s off rescuing Pawter, or Princess Doctor, from the Salt Plains nomads who captured her after she left Spring Town. She actually does a good job of rescuing herself at first, cheating to win at arm wrestling, but then he has to start a bar brawl to get her safely away. I like Pawter, but she’s not the most strategic planner in the Quad. She seems to have taken on responsibility for thwarting whatever plots the Nine have against all the rest of the citizens, but she sure hasn’t figured out any next steps. I believe jakk has addled her brain a bit.

John talks her into coming on board Lucy, which again upsets Dutch, and off we go to the school on a space station. Which is majorly creepy and deserted. More goose bumps when a recorded welcome for incoming students from Delle Seyah Kendry plays. “Archvillains, abandoned space station — I’ve seen this movie,” says Johnny. We have, too, but we’re aboard for the ride!

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch and Aaron Ashmore as John on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Delle Seyah herself soon arrives, as Dutch and team, including Pawter, are examining a cryopod room where the students were evidently held and “educated.” Delle is frantic to find the children. D’avin and Delle’s clueless bodyguard (who might as well have been wearing a Star Trek red shirt, so obvious was his expendability) take the three kids back to Lucy. Dutch and Delle head for the control room, and John and Pawter try to wrest data from the cryopods, with Princess Doctor saying at one point, “Let’s science this sh*t.” Soooo, this line from the novel and movie The Martian has remained in cultural memory and made it to the Quad? In novels we usually try to avoid doing something that takes the reader completely out of our own book and puts them into another headspace. I was seriously looking for Matt Damon and the potato patch for a moment. (Shakes self.) Back to Killjoys. Pawter shares some of her childhood pranks with Johnny as they work. She and Delle Seyah sound like they were the Quad version of mean girls. “Chemistry’s a bitch and so am I,” says Princess Doc after reciting one incident. “I’m terrified and turned on,” is Johnny’s reaction. The way to this man’s heart!

Events get out of control. More bonding between D’av and new student Jake over the fact they were both Nova Cadets. The red shirt guard dies. Dutch shoots Delle Seyah to convince her to act as bait to attract the deranged teacher stalking them and who has turned off life support. Turns out Khlyen’s big data burst got rerouted to the cryo learning modules and killed all the kids BUT Olan, the older brother of Jake. Olan thought the teacher was trying to kill him and killed her in self-defense. He’s got all kinds of tech smarts, built a cute robot and has been projecting an image of the late teacher as part of his plot. Olan now has the Arkyn memories (although he doesn’t know what they are) and wants to steal Lucy and take his brother to somewhere safe. There’s some back-and-forth between Johnny and Olan over who’s smarter. Johnny tends to be touchy when anyone thinks they can outsmart him. Lucy’s not happy to be used as a pawn, either. By appealing to the need to be a good big brother, John talks Olan down from destroying Lucy.

Dutch and Delle Seyah play a game of two lies and one truth, in which the Qreshi reveals the school is an illegal “living human seed bank” she’s established to preserve the Qresh way of life. “For winter or war?” Dutch wants to know. Delle says that depends on Khlyen’s message, which was actually meant for her. I’m dying to know more of Delle’s backstory, especially with Khlyen — they seem to have been working pretty closely. Just about at death’s door due to the life support system being turned off, Delle kisses Dutch to pass along a few DNA molecules that allow Dutch to reactivate the school station’s systems in the nick of time. Good enough reason to kiss!

Delle and Dutch are now allies.

And we all leave the space station …

There’s a little scene on Leith between Dutch and Alvis, back in his monk robes and his meditative headspace. The kids are going to stay on Leith, and Alvis will try to help Olan access the Arkyn data in his brain, while also continuing to work with the elder monks to decipher the parchment he found in the mine shaft.

The episode ends with Fancy Lee Level 6 Extraordinaire killing a lot of people on a ship in order to free Khlyen. Surrounded by bodies, Khlyen orders Fancy to take them to the Jaqobis home world so he can figure out why D’avin was immune to the green space goo. “I do love a road trip,” he says. But the Black Root will follow, Fancy warns ominously.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

I appreciated that two of the “exceptional” Westerley kids being taken to Prodigy school were girls, but wow, they got next to nothing to do, other than snark a bit and explain how adults lose the top end of their hearing.

Loved hearing Dutch tell Delle Seyan they were “hate flirting.”

I am so eager to learn more of the Jaqobis brother backstory, so I love Khlyen going to their home world.

Anthony Lemke as Three on Dark Matter. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Prodigy Pictures/Syfy)

On to Dark Matter episode four, We Were Family …

The episode jumped around a lot, so I’m going to keep the major threads together for my recap.

This episode focused quite a bit on Three and opens with a flashback to his childhood, which we know is his because the boy has the metal rocket toy which will later be in Three’s lockbox aboard the Raza. His parents are apparently being killed while he hides in a closet where his mother put him. It’s really interesting to me how the writers are dealing with the challenge they set up, of the characters not having their real memories, but sort of re-learning bits of their past, often in uncomfortable ways.

Jodelle Ferland as Five and Shaun Sipos as Devon on Dark Matter. (Photo: Russ Martin, Prodigy Pictures/Syfy)

The Raza docks at a remote space station, to get medical supplies so Devon can operate on Six.

Three and Arax head off to the bar, after Three borrows money from Five at an exorbitant interest rate. The scurrilous men from the end of the last episode are waiting in the bar and assure Three they’re his old friends, practically raised him, tell him their version of his childhood and the death of his parents. Tanner, the leader of this gang, says he worked for Three’s parents and, although unable to prevent their deaths, chased down those who killed them and exacted revenge, during which he got an ugly scar. He then raised Three. Although skeptical at first, Three becomes convinced by the story of the scar to trust them. The gang persuades him to go with them on a payroll heist job to earn some cash. Things start to unravel when Three realizes Tanner kidnapped a man’s son to force him to cooperate. Three oh-so-casually asks a new henchman about Tanner’s tattoo. He learns it was actually acquired in a fight over a poker game, there’s a standoff and all the henchmen die. Three then goes to where Tanner’s holding the boy and confronts him about the actual story of his parents’ deaths. Tanner says Three (or Titch, which was his nickname) always knew the truth, but Three says he doesn’t remember anymore and kills Tanner before he can get a shot off.

Meanwhile, Arax calls his corporate boss lady, Alicia Reynaud, and gets her to tell him exactly what she’s looking for on the Raza. Off he goes to search Five’s cabin, where, sure enough, he finds a key. Running into Five as he’s leaving the area of her cabin is awkward, but he gives her a lot of consoling thoughts about how her friends will support her no matter what happens to Six  (who’s in surgery at this point). Awkward hug ensues and off Arax goes to give Alicia the key. Uh oh, problem: It’s the wrong key! Five has played him. She’s an excellent pickpocket.

Zoie Palmer as The Android on Dark Matter. (Photo: Russ Martin, Prodigy Pictures/Syfy)

My favorite intriguing subplot this week involved The Android, who insists on going with Five and Devon to buy supplies because she wants to study humans who aren’t the Raza crew. She stays behind on her own after her humans leave — bad idea! — and gets caught shoplifting by a security guard as she’s standing entranced by a couple kissing. Victor, an apparently kind bystander, intervenes, says she’s with him so the guard backs off. Android shows him the toothbrush she’s taken as a gift and he asks her to leave with him. I got upset every time Android chirps “OK” to some request. Girl needs a stronger sense of self-preservation!

She ends up in a clandestine meeting where it’s revealed Victor is a high-level android disguised as human, as are the other four in the room. They’re very condescending to poor Android and refuse to believe she’s anything more than an obsolete model “parroting empathy.” Victor asks to do a scan to see what she really is and tells her there’s an upgrade that would allow her to pass as human the way they do. He takes her shopping for a little black dress that is wow — our Android is hiding a killer bod under that unflattering utility jumpsuit. Then they part, after he kisses her and warns her again that humans can’t be trusted, not even her crew. He tells her she was designed to be special, not imperfect, which is the way she had been thinking of herself, and gives her the upgrade chip. I really wondered what his deal was, why he was being so nice to Android. No one in this universe seems to be truly altruistic — there’s always some deeper motive going on …

Five was of course on to Arax the whole time and shows the rest of the crew her security-cam footage of him ransacking her cabin …

Earlier, Two and Nyx have a few fun moments getting a travel agent to identify the building from Two’s worst memory — it’s on Earth.

At one point Four and Nyx have a very interesting all-out fight scene, where she tells him time slows down for her and she can guess her opponent’s next move. More to come on that, I’m sure! I think there’s a huge backstory to Nyx.

A GNN broadcast updates us on the hunt for One’s killer … have I said lately how much I miss One?

Devon does drugs …

Two and Six have a nice chat when he wakes up after the surgery. He thought he was doing the right thing, turning them all in, trying to save lives, and he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to forgive himself, even if Five and the others have …

Android stands alone on the bridge, holding the special upgrade Victor gave her and pondering …

Alicia reports to an even Bigger Bad that she doesn’t have the key yet and asks him to give her more time. He tells her a war is coming and the Raza crew hold the key to victory.

The key, we’ve been told, allows a person to “access pockets of interdimensional space time.” Hmm. Is that perhaps what Nyx does?

RANDOM THOUGHT

Space stations in the Dark Matter universe are always so dark and cramped!

Amazon bestseller Veronica Scott is a three-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award and has written a number of science-fiction and paranormal romances. Hostage to the Stars is her latest. You can find out more about her and her books at veronicascott.wordpress.com.

MORE ON HEA: Check out more of Veronica’s sci-fi-focused posts

EVEN MORE: Check out Veronica’s interview with Killjoys creator Michelle Lovretta

SPOILERS AHEAD!

I found this week’s episode of Killjoys, Meet the Parents, to be intense and affecting, with humor, too, of course, because this is Killjoys we’re talking about. The two themes intertwining this time were Pawter’s relationship with her parents and the Jaqobis boys and their father.

Aaron Ashmore as John and Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Let’s look at the subplot on Qresh with Johnny by Pawter’s side as her official RAC escort. (Does the RAC know he’s in that capacity, one wonders?) Welcomed by the faithful, elderly family butler and then her  sister and the sister’s oily fiancé, who used to be her fiancé at some point, Pawter is a bundle of nerves. Finding yourself painted out of the family portrait can do that to a girl! Pawter and her genuine sweetheart of a father go off for a private conversation. She wants her mother to lift the order of exile, and Dad advises her to forget it. Pawter tries to explain the problems that Old Town is facing, insisting that’s her home now.

It’s getting close to dinnertime and where’s Johnny? Swimming naked in the family’s baptismal pool and rhapsodizing about how being in so much water feels like getting “licked by angels.” Pawter finds him, and cute banter ensues (“you seem pretty naked”), during which he advises her to just relax. She’s not having it. “Has there ever been a woman in your life who reacted well to ‘relax’?”

Dinner is an excruciating, formal, ritualistic affair with bad food. It’s hard enough to go back to your parents’ house when you’ve been exiled, but the occasion is made infinitely worse by the butler banging a gong and announcing your family members to you, whereupon you have to recite a ritual greeting basically thanking them for the air you breathe. The entire dinner seemed designed to put Pawter in her place, which would be lowly. They had to “sit in order of honor to the house” and she was below Johnny. I LOVED Johnny’s attitude during this whole awkward occasion — he was the sweet guy from the wrong side of the Quad, trying to support his girl, comply with the pointless rituals and step up to save the day as needed.

The actress playing the mother was so cute I just wanted to hug her every time she was on screen, which effectively played up what a cold-hearted person the character was. Telling Pawter there was no way the exile order would be lifted, she did say they could finish dinner before they left. Thanks, Mom!

Pawter and Johnny leave the table (he’s not impressed that there’s a ritual for exiting the table — I bet more gong was involved). She despairs at how she went from “grownup doctor in Old Town to little girl at the dinner table.” Happens to the best of us!

The butler staggers into the room, apparently freezing to death and promptly shatters into ice cubes. The estate is under attack by pathogen-carrying ice fog! Mom takes samples and goes off to her lab, but Pawter forces herself to follow and insists on helping with the analysis. “I spent most of my childhood on the other side of your lab door.” Pawter lays down some home truths about the things she’s done as a doctor, and her ability to help, and insists on working side by side.

Sarah Power as Pawter and Hannah John-Kamen as “Dutch” in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions Limited)

At one point the sister gets her hand frozen and Pawter does an impromptu amputation with a handy sword, which saves the girl’s life. Johnny and Dad have a nice heart-to-heart, and we get glimpses of how his wife must actually have deep, loving feelings buried somewhere inside, because she stood up to her family to marry him, even though he was a carpenter.  “When you love two people equally, you have to choose the one that makes you a better man,” he advises John.

Turns out Mom created the pathogen in the first place, trying to make Qresh uninhabitable for whatever is coming to the Quad and whoever desires the planet, but someone stole her work and turned it on the Simms family. There’s apparently a ticking clock on catastrophe — remember last episode we got similar hints from Delle Seyah, with her clandestine “seed winter-or-war bank” project? But some of the Nine Families “embrace their fate.” (I know which side I’d be on, no embracing of awful fates here.) She and Pawter have a version of honest conversation after Mom infects herself with the pathogen so she can monitor the progress to leave the data for Pawter. “To protect what you love, you must become something you hate,” she says. But she never actually says she loves Pawter.

Mom dies. Pawter tells Johnny, “Qreshi Pawter wants to get drunk; Old Town Pawter wants to fix this.” I like how she and Johnny have adopted this shorthand for which part of their personalities they’re going to listen to. The relationship between them in this episode felt real and comfortable to me.

So John borrows the sister’s diving suit (which was foreshadowed a few times in the pre-dinner conversation), braves the fog, has a bomb to use in blowing up the convenient gas mains which will dissolve the fog and kill the pathogen, the fiancé is revealed as the bad guy (who did NOT see this coming?), Dad braves the fog with no protection, he volunteers to set off the bomb manually, John escapes.

Flash-forward a bit. Pawter takes the oath to become Lady of the Land, which was kinda cool. She’s had an amazing journey from when we first met her in season one, drunk and carousing at Pree’s bar. Johnny tells her basically he’s done being Killjoys Johnny and wants to be Fireball Qreshi Johnny and “give a sh*t” like she does, working with her to save Old Town. He finally says what I’ve been thinking — “Maybe the warrant isn’t all …” They kiss, but Pawter cautions he can’t tell Dutch and D’avin anything. He agrees. We the audience see tragedy approaching in future episodes, right?

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch and Luke Macfarlane as D’avin on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

On the Dutch and D’avin side of the episode, there was an absolute master class in acting by Luke Macfarlane as D’av and Rob Stewart, who plays Khlyen. Each man had to “be” the other as their minds switched bodies during some glowing green-goo action Khlyen was pulling on Telen, the Jaqobis’ home planet. He wants to know why D’av is immune to the green goo and has sought out the bullying, abusive father we’ve heard so much about, to test him. I was oddly unconvinced by the father. The dad in the last episode, Schooled, seemed more compelling to me than this guy, frankly.

But Macfarlane and Stewart were incredibly convincing as Khlyen-in-D’av’s-body and D’av-in-Khlyen’s-body. They really had each other’s mannerisms, voice patterns and movements mastered. Even the fact that D’av-as-Khylen couldn’t fool Fancy Lee for a second while Dutch recognized Khlyen-in-D’av immediately was skillfully done.

Lucy had a great line, as Khlyen-in-D’av was complaining about the primitive level of technology on the ship. “You’re welcome to step outside and find some other technology,” she says coldly (never mind they’re in deep space).

Khlyen-in-D’av can’t answer a question simply to save his life but gives Dutch some more mysterious and cryptic fragments about the mysteries, before a way is found to switch the wandering minds back to the right places. The Red 17 download he sent to the school has the answers she’s seeking and it wasn’t her on Arkyn 200 years ago.

Mind trade accomplished, Fancy on Telen asks Khlyen, “Are you you?” and then expresses an ominous hope that he’ll see D’avin again. I love the character of Fancy — I just wish he wasn’t an evil Level 6 now. But Sean Baek plays all aspects of the character so well.

Aaron Ashmore as John and Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

The episode ends on the most poignant note, with Dutch hugging a strangely surprised Johnny, telling him, “Lots of things have changed for me lately. I’m glad you haven’t — you’re my gravity … if anything changed, you’d tell me?” He lies and you can see the toll it’s taking on him to hide the truth and let her walk away happy.

Tori Anderson as Sabine on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

One of the things I like about this show is that Johnny and Dutch have a solidly platonic relationship, but even so, once love enters the scene — with John and Pawter a couple now — the other relationship can’t help but be affected. Poor Dutch! Heartache ahead.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

Watch out for Sabine the barmaid. She seems too good to be true to me, too pretty and clean for Old Town. Where exactly did she come from?

And D’av tells Johnny their father just seemed small now, so perhaps we weren’t supposed to be too awed by the blustering Sheriff Jaqobis.

INTERVIEW WITH THOM ALLISON

There was a lack of time with the incomparable Pree in this episode, so I’ve got a quick interview with actor Thom Allison to help satisfy that craving for Pree-ness.

Veronica: What are the good, bad and fabulous about working on a science-fiction show?

Thom: Good: The fan base is huge for the genre, and they are sooo committed. When they like you, they really like you. Our fans have embraced us so warmly, it’s been a little overwhelming.

Bad: The need to be original is crucial because there seems to be so much good sci-fi out there.

Fabulous: My wardrobe and makeup. I mean, come on. Our designer Trysha Bakker gets to go to town on Pree’s looks.

Thom Allison as Pree on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Veronica: I must totally agree about the wardrobe! What was your favorite scene (either season) and why?

Thom: The scene at the gambling table with Aaron Ashmore in Eulogy (the casino) in season two episode one. When we had our fake lovers’ quarrel, we could barely get through it. Everyone was laughing and in such an extra great mood that day.

Veronica: That scene in the casino was hilarious for sure, and it really felt organic to the two characters, as if they just decided WTH and took off with the spat, escalating the insults, which of course is a testament to the skill of the acting, in my opinion. And when Johnny dissed Pree’s mother and all the bad guys were so horrified — quite the fun moment. As an actor, what is your favorite aspect of the character you play?

Thom: I love that Pree is so forthcoming yet he still has so many secrets. Having a secret is great fun as an actor. I can lay in nuances that will pay off later, even if a secret hasn’t been written yet. I also love that Pree is so sassy. He has the greatest lines, which is a gift.

Veronica: Great lines, great delivery! Since we’re a books blog, what’s on your to-be-read list?

Thom: Been given Andrea Martin’s Lady Parts. Love her and looking forward to reading it.

Amazon best-seller Veronica Scott is a three-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award, and has written a number of science-fiction and fantasy romances. Her latest release is Hostage To The Stars. You can find out more about her and her books at veronicascott.wordpress.com. 

MORE ON HEA: If you’re looking for Veronica’s Dark Matter recap

EVEN MORE: Check out Veronica’s interview with Killjoys creator Michelle Lovretta

SPOILERS AHEAD!

The I Love Lucy episode of Killjoys begins in Old Town with the Killjoys chasing down yet another skeezy lowlife criminal, this time a seller of homemade explosives. Serving the warrant has its amusing moments for Johnny, since D’avin clearly forgot to read the fine print and gets himself in trouble repeatedly, but things turn out fine. A bit rough on D’av, which is the norm.

Aaron Ashmore as John and Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

“I’ve been thinking about Pawter,” Dutch says, giving me an uh-oh feeling, don’t know about Johnny. But it turns out Dutch was actually thinking about Pawter’s Mom infecting herself with the ice fog virus. Dutch thinks they need to infect themselves with the green plasma to learn more about it. Or at least study the gunk in more depth.

Under protest Johnny extracts some raw plasma from his pet Mossy. Cute banter with D’avin over the fact he named the mossipede because their father never let him have a dog. D’av can manipulate the plasma — attract and repel it — the same way he does to Mossy. A fun sequence as D’av ends up mind-melding with Mossy and comes out of it chiefly remembering having a stomach with teeth and swearing not to ever step on another bug.

Thom Allison as Pree on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Turns out they need pure plasma and former warlord (or “stylish dictator”) Pree of course knows who to talk to. He and Dutch converse privately while D’avin flirts with Sabine the barmaid. There’s a lovely little bit where Pree advises Dutch about how she “dwants,” which he defines as “don’t want D’avin herself but don’t want anyone else to have him either.” He gives Dutch directions to a collector of rare items around the galaxy who is said to use green magic to control people. This guy also has over 300 outstanding warrants, so Dutch figures she has leverage.

Sabine tells D’av she’s an old-fashioned girl and prefers men to make the first move, among other things. She also wants him to bring her peaches from outside the Old Town wall. D’avin is predictably googly-eyed over her. A little too much so, for me. His infatuation seems odd. Even when he thought he was attracted to Pawter in season one, he didn’t go this weak-kneed. OK, I admit it — I just want him to be with Dutch. Moving on …

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Johnny, meanwhile, is back at Lucy having a holo phone convo with Pawter on Qresh as she prepares to endure “six hours of ritual, twenty minutes of backstabbing” at a meeting of the Nine. Johnny assures her it will all be worth the sacrifices once they bring the wall down. As the call ends, she lets her robe slip, giving him a flash of her lovely naked parting view. Johnny tells Lucy to erase the record of the call. Why do I have a feeling that recording may come back to haunt him at some point?

Our Killjoys fly off to find the collector in an asteroid field. Johnny, who you may remember has a feel for asteroids, rejoices in the whole experience and swoops among the celestial rocks in heart-stopping maneuvers worthy of Han Solo himself.  Turns out San Romwell, the collector, lives inside an asteroid made into a ship, a circumstance which appears to make Johnny green with envy.

The price of admission to the asteroid ship is a trade, says the genial collector. I say beware the fine print of this verbal agreement!

“Honey, I’m home,” Johnny announces in Desi Arnaz fashion as Lucy lands inside the asteroid.

Keon Alexander as San Romwell and Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

The collector is nothing short of being a hoarder, but luckily for him he has a molecular printer and can zap any of his possessions into or out of the material state. So what he actually has is a room with thousands of keys for the printer. Oh, and did I mention the three android women with guns in their legs? Which Johnny explains are technically “gyneoids” and very illegal. Good point, if irrelevant in the moment. Johnny’s so technical. I enjoyed Romwell’s reply that everything is legal somewhere.

The rabid collector is totally unimpressed with all that the Killjoys have to offer, including the rare Captain Apex comic (I want that — can we trade?). Johnny is now jealous of the guy’s cool home and dislikes his boasty attitude. “I have 20 of this and 2 million of that,” he mocks his host. Worse to come — the collector wants Mossy! Johnny refuses, using high-flown scientific language about his research, but Dutch cuts through the smokescreen and reminds him they can cut Mossy in half and it’ll be fine. Warning them he really wants the story behind where they found Mossy, Romwell extracts raw plasma from the pet and says that’s what they asked for. Fine print, remember?

Johnny cries foul, but the power is all on Romwell’s side, with his gun-toting androids. The ladies have been scanning Lucy all this time, trying to hack her system and cataloging everything on board. Johnny worries about “under the bed” private possessions. Illicit and expensive holo phone from Pawter, anyone? But his secret isn’t revealed. This time.

Keon Alexander as San Romwell and Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Romwell decides to add John and D’av to his collection but will let Dutch buy her freedom with the royal musical instrument displayed on Lucy’s bulkhead, the sitara, and of course the story. She agrees and off they go to his rooms, which look like “an antique store got drunk and threw up on an asteroid,” she says dismissively. As a collector of too many knickknacks myself, I thought it was all tastefully displayed and even dusted!

The two link to share the sitara story, and we learn a bit more about Dutch. Her family was very rich but lost everything and she was given to the royal harem, where she was lonely. Her father sent Khlyen to be her tutor (which we heard Khlyen tell her in a flashback last season, but I’m still not sure I believe it, or that there isn’t much, much more to the tale).  She was supposed to charm the prince with music on the sitara when she came of age.

Meanwhile, the androids are trying to acquire D’avin and Johnny for the collection as ordered. “Stop talking and be naked,” says one to D’av, trying to undress him.  D’av puts up a pretty futile fight, trying to buy time for John to do his techno thing.

And at approximately 20 minutes into the episode (not counting commercials), Lucy inhabits the android body and Here’s Lucy! Played by Tamsen McDonough, the actress who voices Lucy. I have to take a moment to say this was all so trippy and I LOVED it. If you’ve been shipping Johnny and Lucy, they “meet” in this episode. Johnny says, “It is extremely weird hearing your voice come out of that bot …” For her part, Lucy enjoys having opposable thumbs and shooting weapons. But just wait …

Lucy turns off the other “San-bots.” (Took me a while to figure out that their name derived from the collector’s name. Duh.) D’av grabs the peaches for Sabine — a man who can prioritize under pressure — and the trio heads back to the ship.

Romwell is pushing Dutch for more, so he plays the sitara while she sings the song she was to have done as a duet with the prince. We see scenes of a happy past that never happened, with Dutch married to the prince and raising a baby. Romwell says he’s forgotten to even dream of living and dying with someone, which is something he can never have. Dutch now goes really dark, telling him there was a paralytic agent on the sitara’s strings. She’d done all those murders as a child and young person for Khlyen because the deal was she’d be free on her wedding day and then that turned out to be a lie because the prince was the ultimate target. Dutch strangles Romwell and says no one will ever steal her freedom again. This was a really bleak gaze into what made Dutch the person she is today, and I felt all kinds of sympathy for her, let me tell you.

She returns to the room of a million keys and tries to find the one for the green plasma. Surprise, Romwell isn’t dead and he isn’t a Level 6 either, just a guy who was tortured by aliens seeking to invade his planet. Pretty evenly matched, Dutch and Romwell fight and talk. Nice way to keep us occupied while more backstory is revealed. Under the alien torture, he revealed all the secrets about his planet’s defenses — so he bought his freedom with other lives much as Dutch did — eventually escaped and was healed at an outlaw hospital ship. The “hackbot nanites” he was given are still working, if too well and he’s actually 432 years old.

He really wants Dutch to stay with him and gives her a hair comb that was his first trade, but she’s not interested.

The San-bots reactivate and are stuck in kill mode. Johnny and D’av are trapped in the room of 1 million keys again. Apparently, the diagrams of the asteroid are so defective that even Lucy gets a bit lost. The androids are battering the door down in a scene reminiscent of how the Id Creature in Forbidden Planet pounds the door of the Krell refuge. I love references to the classics! Lucy asks John to kiss her (swoon), and when he goes for a peck on the lips because he can’t resist the chance to kiss a robot, she grabs him and makes it a real kiss, complete with actual fireworks. Which he, the mood killer, tells her aren’t needed. She thanks him for the data anyway and distracts the androids so the brothers can escape.

Dutch and Romwell catch up to the brothers.

Lucy the Ship is being “hacked by the bitches who hacked me” — yes, this sudden twist, having multiple versions of Lucy, can get confusing — and we’re all running out of time. D’avin pours the precious green plasma from Romwell’s stash on an energy crystal and sets it ricocheting around the place, which is eventually going to blow up the entire asteroid. And we’re out in the nick of time …

Back on Westerley, D’avin tells Dutch that’s the first time he felt really good about himself since the bad stuff happened to him in the military. She sends him off to find Sabine.

Dutch has had Bellus arrange a fake ID for Romwell. He says he feels free, now that all his collections are gone. (Seems the drastic decluttering worked for him.) He also says Dutch doesn’t remind him of anyone, which is his version of a compliment, and gives her a spare vial of green plasma he was saving. He’s heard rumors that the invaders who took down his world are coming to the Quad and advises her to “be happy where you can.”

For Dutch this apparently means Alvis’ bedroom on Leith. He is one sexy Scarback. “There are a lot of different ways a man can worship,” he assures her. Later, they discuss what he’s finding in the oldest writings of his sect, which discuss a green elixir from the Tree that confers eternal life. What if it’s not just religious metaphor, he asks, but real? Maybe the monks were cutting to show they could still bleed and scar, and were therefore human. Hmmm …

Johnny and Pawter are discussing teleplasticity and disruptive thought patterns when he’s startled to find she’s not a hologram phone image but actually there on board Lucy for a brief visit. As the bedroom door closes Lucy is requested to turn off her cameras and scanners. I thought she missed a chance here to be jealous, but apparently she approves of Pawter. Well, of course she would if Johnny’s been doing the programming, I guess.

Luke Macfarlane as D’avin and Tori Anderson as Sabine on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Not to forget D’av and Sabine at the Royal, she loves his gift of the peaches. Soon they’re upstairs in her room literally ripping off their clothes and having artistically shot naked hot sex … and she cries green tears of happiness. Wait, what? She convulses and collapses while more green gunk comes from everywhere as D’av is unable to help her … “Sabine!”

And we wait for the next episode!

Trivia: Today, Aug. 6, would have been actress Lucille Ball’s 105th birthday.

I recently interviewed actress Tamsen McDonough about Killjoys in general. She didn’t divulge any spoilers, but it was a fun Q&A.

Tamsen McDonough

Veronica: What are the good, bad and fabulous about working on a science-fiction show?

Tamsen: Good: the endless and unpredictable creativity of characters, situations, plots, creatures, etc., etc.

Bad: waiting to see all the SPFX.

Fabulous: two words. THE FANS.

Veronica:  What was your favorite scene and why?

Tamsen: Veronica, as you’ve had a preview of all the episodes in season two, you know that there are some exciting scenes coming up that will be really fun for the viewers!

Veronica: Fair enough, no future spoilers, but in this episode I personally loved the Lucy-Johnny kiss and the fireworks she set off! As an actor, what is your favorite aspect of the character you play?

Tamsen: I just love playing “Lucy,” the Killjoys’ AI spaceship, as not only is it an amazing challenge to play a non-human character, she’s sassy, loyal and unapologetic about her like and dislike of various characters. I’m also convinced she desperately wants to be human, so her dreams and insecurities are really fun nuances to play.

Veronica: Since we’re a books blog, what book or books are currently on your to-be-read list?

Tamsen: Actually, just a few days ago, I was forcing my love of Christopher Moore novels (especially Lamb) and The Princess Bride by William Goldman onto a friend, and he retaliated by suggesting The Martian and Fight Club. Otherwise, American on Purpose by Craig Ferguson and piles of other comedic biographies are at the top of my list … The Life and Loves of a He Devil by Graham Norton and Yes, Please by Amy Poehler were my most recent reads, and now I’m completely hooked on comedic bios.

Amazon bestseller Veronica Scott is a three-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award, and has written a number of science-fiction and fantasy romances. Her latest release is Hostage to the Stars. You can find out more about her and her books at veronicascott.wordpress.com.

MORE ON HEA: If you’re looking for Veronica’s Dark Matter recap

EVEN MORE: Check out Veronica’s interview with Killjoys creator Michelle Lovretta

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Heart-Shaped Box is a complex episode, written by showrunner Michelle Lovretta, which actress Hannah John-Kamen (Dutch) said in a group interview prior to the start of this season was one she was personally “excited to see.” We learn much more about Sabine, and the themes run dark this episode, although there are the usual one-liners and quips in the beginning. By the end, the situation was looking grim, especially for Johnny.

Morgan Kelly as Alvis and Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch on Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

We start on Leith with Dutch in bed with the extremely sexy Alvis, having a nightmare of the “other Dutch” coming to murder him. Once Alvis wakes her, he gives her a mini lecture about putting too much pressure on herself, that she’s not the only one who can solve the Quad’s problems. Dutch believes she is, however. (And we know she’s probably right, don’t we?)

Finally, the scene shifts to D’avin with Sabine lying face down in a pool of the green gunk, where the last episode ended. He runs from the room …

Johnny is outside, talking to a Company employee who’s been sentenced to live inside the Old Town wall. She is extremely reluctant to cooperate, and at the critical juncture, D’av interrupts, dragging his brother away to help with Sabine. Luckily, she’s still alive but weak from having “sixed out on you,” as Johnny puts it, while he delivers pithy brotherly advice about sex ed. D’av wants to take Sabine to Lucy, but Johnny is worried the bar patrons may object to them kidnapping the sexy bartender. Eventually, they put Sabine in a bag.

Dutch is not impressed, feeling they must be “way the hells past better choices” if they’re bringing her a girl in a bag. She checks how D’av is doing as a result of this trauma — “not great” — and then exults that finally they have a Level Six to study. “In the bag,” says John, which even he recognizes is a skosh too much humor for the situation.

Tori Anderson as Sabine on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

A search of RAC records reveals Sabine is actually 89 (a shock to D’av) and she isn’t healing as Sixes are supposed to do. “You broke her,” Johnny says to D’av. They decide it’s an allergic reaction caused by D’av’s immunity to the green plasma, so Johnny goes to his cabin to secretly consult with Pawter. Along the way he also tells her to put out a warrant for the Company employee so he can force the woman to talk to him. Pawter is uneasy at mixing his RAC badge up in this, but Johnny is grimly determined.

Sabine wakes dramatically when the antidote is administered, and then Dutch cold-cocks her so she’ll be “normally unconscious” and can be dealt with. When Sabine is awake again, she shares that she hates how much she likes D’av and that Level Sixes are “soldiers working for the true purpose of the RAC,” but declines to share what the purpose is. Through this entire episode, I was reluctant to trust a single word Sabine said, although the actress certainly plays her sympathetically. It was as if she and Dutch were playing “Two Truths and a Lie,” without ever acknowledging the game.

Sabine does say Khlyen sent her to protect D’avin from Dutch. Do we believe this? I don’t, for one. Dutch begins to apply torture to get answers and D’av draws her aside before this gets very far. He admits Sabine “spy-banged” him, but he wants to bring RAC officer Turin in rather than do this on their own.

Turin has another off-the-grid facility where he and a small group are trying to learn more about Sixes so they can be eliminated. He has a “pupillometric measurement device” to use on Sabine to force her to ID the other Sixes. Of course Johnny loves the tech, and while Turin and the others are talking, Sabine and Phil, the guy in the exam room, are having a duel to the death — he’s a Six — where she ends up taking his head off. Also turns out there’s a fancy execution stick for killing Sixes. Sabine weeps, saying it’s the first kill she’s felt in a long time. Turin promptly bails, saying he’s got to go dark and off the grid while he tries to deal with the Sixes. The Black Root, he says, is the secret police that protects the Sixes.

Back at Lucy a bit later, Sabine has been given an explosive collar to ensure her good behavior. D’av feels he deserves answers from her. Sabine tells him everything he does is about Dutch, which wasn’t the answer he was exactly expecting. “I was the door-closer, the move-on lay,” she says. Only of course that didn’t work out for anyone.

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch and Luke Macfarlane as D’avin on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Dutch and D’av argue over how Sabine is to be treated and what will happen to her. Dutch is all, “Don’t feel sorry for her, she’s a weapon,” and we will get rid of her. D’av says they’re not murderers, there are rules and Sabine needs to be treated like an enemy combatant. Apparently, the Geneva Convention for prisoners of war still applies in the Quad. Actually, I respected D’av for standing up to Dutch on this.

I feel as if Dutch and Sabine are kind of mirror images of each other in this episode, with D’av in the middle. Sabine has been the emotionless killer created by Khlyen that Dutch is so afraid of becoming. Whether she’s lying or not, Sabine is clearly regaining her feelings under the influence of D’av’s anti-plasma, while Dutch seems to me to be going darker and darker in her approach and losing touch with her feelings in her determination to find out what’s going on. Sabine taunts Dutch that Khlyen “broke you in the cradle” while Dutch says again she’s “not anybody’s puppet.”

Luke Macfarlane as D”Avin and Tori Anderson as Sabine Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch on Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Sabine offers a deal — she’ll give up all the Level Sixes after Dutch lets her go. Of course that isn’t going to fly, but eventually they settle on her revealing the Sixes first. She and D’av end up cramped in a tiny tub on a table, using the green plasma as a “neurobinder,” because all the memories of the Sixes are “in the green,” which is how Khlyen accesses everything.  Sabine starts out letting D’av identify Sixes as promised, but then she hijacks the session to explore memories of a snowy forest, which she tells D’av is her grandfather’s peach farm. Maybe after the Ice Age — D’av doesn’t buy it, and neither do I. She’s all happy at the sight of a gleaming silver cube, and D’av breaks off the session.

Dutch goes undercover in Old Town to search for some of the Sixes Sabine did identify and then later starts searching Sabine’s room, which involves a lot of knifework done to the mattress. Right after she finds proof that Sabine is Black Root herself, a Black Root soldier attacks and she kills him with the silver spike.

Johnny has made a side trip to Leith to see Bellus and pick up the Level Two warrant for the Company employee he wants to question. Bellus — of whom we need more! — is suspicious and tries to get him to tell her why he’s going solo. She reminds him what happened last time he did this. “I don’t have to explain myself to you,” he says angrily, in a tone so far removed from the John we’re used to that it was shocking. Bellus says, “They deserve better from you,” and lets him leave.

Da’v and Sabine are alone in Lucy, and she first tries to get him to sleep with her again, then smoothly shifts to trying to get him drunk. “You’re the first real connection I’ve had in over 60 years,” D’av says. “You stalked me and used me. It’s not real.” She hits him with a weepy zinger: “You’re my last butterflies.” Awww. Parts of what she says I believe, just not most of it. Sabine knows the green fungus in her brain is regenerating and soon she’ll be all Level Six again. “Don’t watch when Dutch kills me … I want to matter to someone … the last wish of a dying girl still counts … lie to me …” Yup, laying it on thick.

Are we surprised that when Dutch returns to Lucy, D’av is holding the explosive collar and Sabine has been allowed to leave?

Dutch is hurt and betrayed and starts saying cutting things to D’av, but before she can get too far, he tells her, “Our team always comes first,” which is ironic considering they don’t know John is off doing something that’s going to cause everyone a lot of trouble. Oh, and D’av for all his sympathy with Sabine over the awful process of becoming a Six, put a tracker on her. It’s “so messed up, but you did the right thing,” Dutch admits.

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch on Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Off they go to Leith, tracking Sabine to the snowy forest. Dutch confronts her, and they fight. And talk. Do we see a pattern here? Last episode the Collector and Dutch fought. And talked. Sabine says the gleaming cube is a “safe house” put there by Khlyen. She provides Dutch with a lot of information.

“Khlyen feels for you.” Apparently, he was there at the start of all the Arkyn-green gunk-Level Six stuff, but at some point he rebelled because of Dutch and erased all memories of her from the green. He protected her and trained her to kill and not to care so she’d have an easier transition to becoming a Six. Sabine tries to hit Dutch where it hurts when it comes to D’av and Johnny. “You’re with the Jaqobis because they feel so damn much, but I can see how broken you are, so you hate me.” And then she says about life as a Six, “You’re the walking dead, only no one will let you die.”

Dutch shoots her in the head. “I’m not doing this for you.”

When Dutch investigates the nearby shiny cube, she discovers it’s filled with things from her childhood and other mementos. As she tells D’av later, she thinks Khlyen made it for her and it’s a “message she couldn’t decode yet.” Intriguing.

Aaron Ashmore as John on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Returning to Johnny, he’s caught up to the Company employee and threatened her into telling him all about Green Well, where the Company did some kind of experiments “like culling a herd,” where the old, the sick and the very young died in one day and the rest were taken away. He breaks into Jelco’s office at Spring Hill where the woman told him the controls for the Old Town wall are located, but there’s an ambush (she got scared and betrayed him) and he’s caught. Jelco rightly states there’s no warrant allowing Johnny to break into a senior Company officer’s private quarters and steal things. Off-screen, Johnny gets pretty savagely beaten up. Our last view of him is sitting in a cagelike cell, in shock and in bad shape. I’m pondering what ripple effects this will have on Pawter, to say nothing of how Dutch and D’av will react. Plenty here to power events in the last three episodes of the season.

Blissfully unaware of what’s happened to Johnny, Dutch and D’av look at the item she’s brought back from the shiny cube — one of Khlyen’s red kill boxes. A slip of paper  inside bears the name “Aneela.” Dutch thinks it’s “the other me you saw on Arkyn” and that Khlyen wants Dutch to kill her.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

In a group interview before season two started, Hannah said she “loves the physical stuff” involved in the role of Dutch and that it comes naturally to her. She mentioned the “girl-on-girl” fight in the snow in particular as being a good one, and that learning the moves of the fight scenes “is like a dance.”

INTERVIEW WITH MORGAN KELLY

I’ve been fascinated by the character of Alvis the monk since the first season and recently had the chance to interview actor Morgan Kelly, who portrays this multifaceted man.

Veronica: What are the good, bad and fabulous about working on a science-fiction show?

Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin and Morgan Kelly as Alvis on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Morgan: That’s a tough question. There’s a lot to love about being on a science-fiction show. The incredible sets, the space gadgets and weapons, etc., but for me personally one of the best things about Alvis is his costumes. I get to wear a cape. For work. All of Alvis’ costumes are handmade by the incredible costume department, so every single piece of clothing is made with love … I guess wearing a cape to work probably falls into the “fabulous” category.

Veronica: No argument about the cape! What’s your favorite scene (either season) and why?

Morgan: I have a couple favorite scenes. As an actor I’m all about the “connection.” Sure, it’s fun doing fight scenes and running through the sewers, but I really enjoy the one-on-one scenes where there is some sort of emotional connection. The scene in episode three, season two where Dutch is hallucinating from the mossipedes and Alvis has to pull her out comes to mind. That being said, I also really liked the scene in season one episode eight where Alvis runs through the acid rain to save John. That was badass.

Veronica: Both of those scenes you mentioned are favorites of mine, but I particularly remember the run through the black rain as a jaw-dropping moment for me — it was GREAT. Badass indeed. That whole season-one episode was thought-provoking for what it showed us about Alvis …  As an actor, what is your favorite aspect of the character you play?

Morgan: My favorite thing about Alvis is that he is this dark, brooding character with the weight of the world on his shoulders, but he also has a wry sense of humor that has been a lot of fun to play. What I appreciate about the show so much is that there aren’t any two-dimensional characters. Everyone has a clear motive and point of view, which is all an actor can really ask for.

Veronica: Since we’re a books blog, what book or books are on your to-be-read list?

Morgan: I’m actually reading two books at the moment. A couple years back, my sister gave me East of Eden by John Steinbeck, and it changed everything for me. I’ve systematically been going through all his books and right now I’m at Sweet Thursday. I am also a HUGE fantasy fan. My library is probably 95% fantasy right now. The other book I am reading is Fool’s Quest by Robin Hobb. I’ve been reading her books for over 20 years now and think she’s great.

—

Here’s a sneak peek at the next episode:

Amazon bestseller Veronica Scott is a three-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award and has written a number of science-fiction and fantasy romances. Her latest release is Hostage to the Stars. You can find out more about her and her books at veronicascott.wordpress.com.

MORE ON HEA: If you’re looking for Veronica’s Dark Matter recap

EVEN MORE: Check out Veronica’s interview with Killjoys creator Michelle Lovretta

SPOILERS AHEAD!

There are two distinct plotlines in Full Metal Monk, and I really enjoyed the one with Dutch, D’av and Alvis, advancing the green plasma story. Johnny and Pawter’s arc was a trip of a different kind, complete with uppers and downers and emotionally wrenching.

Aaron Ashmore as John on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Rough beginning, with Dutch confronting Johnny in his cell at Spring Hill. He of course tries to be humorous, “No place left to punch,” but the joking falls flat. The whole scene is painful right down to the point where he tells Dutch: “Pawter has her thing and you have your thing,” and he’s in love with Pawter. Dutch acknowledges they’re “both in a hard place right now,” but she never expected Johnny to be part of her problems. She’s livid that she almost had her license suspended for what Johnny did. Calling Pawter to rescue him, Dutch walks away. She came only because of “habit.” Ouch.

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch on Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

I’m going to stick with Dutch, D’av and Alvis for now. Turin has emerged from his off-the-grid phase, and he and D’av are taking down a Six. Not only is Turin resistant to D’av’s attempts at bonding, unamused by the “team awesome force” jokes, but also he knows their quarry as a friend from way back and has a hard time believing he could possibly be a Six. Until the guy tries to kill him. D’av is also getting the worst of the fight until he exerts his power over the green plasma and literally explodes the Six’s head. “That was new,” he says with typical D’av understatement.

Personally, I’m beginning to wonder if everyone in Old Town but Pree has already been turned into a pod person Level Six!

Back at Lucy, D’av explains his new killing ability to Dutch in less-than-enthused terms, grossed out by having the man’s eyeballs hit him in the face. They “did not taste like chicken.” Ewww. Dutch has more important concerns to discuss, since she and Johnny are suspending their partnership.  D’av has to choose which side to take and decides since, “Johnny lied to me, too, he needs a timeout.” Off they fly to Leith to see Olan, the teenager from the destroyed school in episode four, whose brain absorbed the Red 17 download from Khlyen by mistake. Alvis tells them Olan tried to kill his brother, and the method is reminiscent of the only way to kill a Six. Dutch asks Olan if he’s heard of Aneela. He calls her the devil in the old tongue, and next thing we know he’s covering the wall with symbols. Alvis matches the symbols to the skin parchment he found on the mummified monk in the mossipede mine, grossing D’av out.

Olan says it’s a map of rivers on Arkyn, which ceased to flow hundreds of years ago. Alvis puts the pieces together, that the 12 monks of legend went to Arkyn to fight the devil. Aneela? Off we go to Arkyn!

Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin and Morgan Kelly as Alvis on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

D’av seeks Alvis out for advice during the flight. “Monk me up a bit,” he says, desiring more control over his ability with the green plasma, so he never gets hit with eyeballs again. “Did you want his eyeballs to blow up?” asks Alvis calmly. Apparently, D’av wanted his whole head to explode, yes. They agree on some baby steps D’av can try to get better at wielding his ability.

On Arkyn they find another of Khlyen’s shiny cubes waiting at what used to be the source of the main river. Only Dutch can get them inside — “lucky, lucky me” — and it turns out to be “the world’s worst elevator,” taking them deep inside Arkyn, too far to contact Lucy. They find an extensive, abandoned installation, which seems like a central command for something.

As they search the place for clues, Dutch gives Alvis a tiny gun, which he wants to reject for a bigger one. “The optics — I don’t exactly look intimidating with this.” “Says the grown man in a cape,” D’av jeers. Then the two men riff on what they’re finding — “dust and junk,” “dusty junk,” “I’m tired of hearing about your dusty junk …” Things get serious fast as the trio find a room with bodies of men who didn’t survive the old process of making Sixes, yet are still alive at a cellular level. Then Alvis finds a living monk, one of the fabled Twelve, inside a stasis cell. The wall enclosing him is the same as the wall around Old Town. But since the lab predates the Company, the mystery deepens.

Dutch shoots out the controls, and Alvis tries talking to the ancient monk. He’s fixated on Dutch, believing her to be Aneela, calling her the devil. D’av tries to control the plasma inside the monk without exploding the man’s head, as Alvis gives advice (“fight him with peace”). Eventually, Alvis hits upon an idea that works since D’av was a trained sniper (“you want my résumé now?!”) and tells him to meditate and calm himself.

Dutch slices her hand to prove she’s still human and the monk drops the bomb that Aneela called Khlyen “father.” This really throws her for a loop and she’s ranting about why Khlyen never told her she looked like his daughter and suffering an anxiety attack about possibilities. D’av gets her mind back in the moment with stern but supportive tough talk.

The monk wants only to die. Alvis understandably wants to take him back to the monastery. D’av says the man needs help to die and “only he gets to decide how much pain is too much, not us.” D’av’s experiences undergoing the Level Six process appear to have left him with enhanced empathy. He had similar feelings about Sabine’s fate in the last episode. I wonder if this will become a chink in his armor in some way when the final showdown happens?

While Alvis does last rites before they kill the monk and destroy the facility, Dutch returns to worrying. “What if I’m her? I … dream about her.” D’av assures her it’s not possible, that she has memories of a childhood, which isn’t comforting because Dutch reminds him Khlyen plays with memories.

Back at Lucy, the ship has analyzed the formula they found on the wall in the old facility. Once she’s reminded she’s not talking to Johnny and is asked to boil her findings down into less techspeak, she says the wall’s ability is to kill fear and trigger euphoria. As D’av puts it, make people into “happy, helpless drones.”

Sarah Power as Pawter on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

On that note, I’m pivoting to the Johnny and Pawter half of the episode.

Pawter rescues Johnny and I thoroughly enjoyed her extremely regal moments in Spring Hill, telling Jelco exactly what she’d do to him. Although at first Jelco is his usual annoying self — “A reunion is like a divorce in reverse” — eventually he tells her “power looks good on her” and capitulates. But wait, this all seemed very easy, too smooth, even given how much power the Nine hold.

Johnny and Pawter waste no time going to Old Town while she tells him she knows what the company is up to — “execution eugenics.” Johnny likes “zero of those words.” The pair roams the town testing air, water and blood samples and finding nothing.

Jelco confers with Delle Seyah Kendry and receives orders to show what the wall is for, ahead of schedule. (Could she be a Six? Hmmm.)

Pascal Langdale as Jelco on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Stopping at the Royale for some downtime, Johnny and Pawter realize no one is losing any weight, despite being locked in. Pree obligingly explains to them that the town is a giant prison, and of course the guards are smuggling in contraband food. He sends them to see his contact, and they find out the company will be shipping in special food in a few hours. Returning to the Royale to wait, Johnny and Pawter are treated to Pree singing — actor Thom Allison has an amazing voice! Off they go, upstairs to her old office, which has been “repurposed” by sexors. Lots of glittery lingerie lying around.

Aaron Ashmore as John on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

This is where things start to go off the rails. Pawter changes into a sexy dress she finds and starts laughing, saying, “I feel good. I can’t remember the last time I felt this good,” even as she and Johnny are reciting all the terrible things that have happened to her. “You have terrible luck,” he says. “Why am I laughing?” she asks. And then she utters words no character in a TV show or movie should EVER utter if they want to be around for later seasons: “You make me so happy I could die.” My author antenna went way up at that line.

Pawter and Johnny proceed to get so silly that by the time her friend Arune, another member of the Nine, shows up for proof of the company villainy, he can only conclude they’re high, maybe on jakk. Jelco arrives, admiring what “demented, helpless puppies” they’ve become. He promptly kills Arune, plants a truly disgusting tongue caress on an unresisting Pawter, explains that all of Old Town is now drugged and unless you have a special skin patch like he’s wearing, you’re basically out of luck. He frames the lovers for Arune’s murder. The acting was amazing here as Johnny and Pawter struggle with the knowledge that these acts they’re witnessing are awful and they should do something, anything, but they can’t resist the power of whatever the wall is broadcasting. “This is all bad, you’re bad,” Johnny says to Jelco, but that’s the most resistance he can muster.

With Jelco gone, Johnny and Pawter wander through the Royale admiring Pree’s singing and out into the street were people are doing self-destructive acts in their euphoria. The phone buzzes as Dutch tries to call him, and John just tosses it aside. Jelco comes on the Old Town vidscreens talking about building a new world and the special food that’s arriving soon while Johnny and Pawter share a kiss by the wall.

SAD. It was sad.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

D’av says the wall turns people into helpless drones and the wall sure does look like a beehive’s honeycomb in that last shot, doesn’t it?

The monastery on Leith reminded me of Rivendell …

I loved Pawter’s “regal scream’ and getting to hear her deliver the “If you’re going to be a princess, be a princess” line.

INTERVIEW WITH SEAN BAEK

Special treat today: I have an interview with actor Sean Baek, who plays Killjoy (and Level Six) Fancy Lee. We haven’t seen enough of him in the last two episodes to suit this viewer, so if you’ve been missing him as I have, here’s a little chat to tide you over.

Sean Baek as Fancy Lee on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Veronica: What are the good, bad and fabulous about working on a science-fiction show?

Sean: The good: I think that storytelling is one tradition, perhaps the longest tradition in human history, that every race, culture, creed, faith/religion, etc., shares. So, it is good to be a part of telling a story that is set in such a unique science-fiction world, such as The Quad in Killjoys, where, really, ANYTHING is possible. You really get to go along with the creator’s and the writers’ imagination and get to be on the “creative ride” together, which is A LOT of fun. I’ve always wanted to work on a sci-fi show, so playing Fancy Lee in Killjoys has truly been a blessing thus far in my career as an actor.

The bad: Honestly, I really can’t think of any! (At the moment, anyway! LOL!)

The fabulous: Being able to work with many different, amazingly talented writers and directors for the show. It’s really fantastic to work with unique visions that enhance the through line of the show as a whole. Also, being able to enjoy the experience along with the fans of Killjoys — the intelligent, caring and wonderfully committed fans — is pretty fabulous. Nowadays with social media (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc.), there are more opportunities to connect with people who are like-minded, globally.  I think that is quite neat — instantly AND closely connecting with people. With this “storytelling,” we all become a part of a community.

Veronica:  What was your favorite scene (either season) and why?

Sean: I have to say that my favourite scene is from season one, episode six (One Blood, written by Annmarie Morais), where my character, Fancy Lee, executes the Level 5 Warrant. Throughout that episode, I got to show who Fancy Lee was quite a bit more than before. In the final moments of that episode, fulfilling that Level 5 Warrant on a former RAC agent named Big Joe (I believe Fancy Lee did it for his fellow Killjoy Dutch, really) and stating, “The warrant is all,” I think, really captured the essence of being a Killjoy, as well as Fancy Lee as a character. There was honour, respect, care and commitment in that decisive act of Fancy Lee’s, in my humble opinion.  (Note: Big “sorry” to Tony Nappo — a wonderful, talented actor I know who portrayed Big Joe so well.)

Veronica: I agree, that was the episode where we came to understand a lot more about Fancy than just his amazing skills and expertise. I really love the character, who intrigued me from the very beginning. I still tend to think of him as similar to the character Paladin from the classic TV show Have Gun Will Travel in my own head …. just something about the cool way Fancy operates. High-class all the way! As an actor, what is your favorite aspect of the character you play?

Sean: I really like the mysterious aspect of my character. In season one, episode one (Bangarang, written by Michelle Lovretta), Fancy Lee’s first appearance, for example, is quite mysterious. There isn’t much expositional introduction; he just appears in a scene, has a brief talk with Dutch. But, in that short moment, without much exposition, we sense that there is history between those two characters and that Fancy Lee could be “bad news,” depending on who you ask. Brilliant writing, if you ask me. Even in episode six (One Blood), where Fancy Lee is featured more, we get a glimpse of what Fancy is capable of, but we don’t necessarily get the “whole picture.” As a huge fan of mystery myself, I quite like that about my character — we know there’s “more than meets the eye.” I also love that within Fancy Lee’s badass self lies a tech geek that likes to build and modify gadgets and weapons.

I would love to give a special shout-out to all my Killjoys family, starting with our supertalented and hard-working creative team helmed by Michelle Lovretta, the producing company, Temple Street Productions, all of our wonderful writers and producers, Space Channel, Syfy, my talented fellow castmates and our awesome crew.

Veronica: Since we’re a book blog, what book or books are on your to-be-read list?

Sean: What We All Long For, written by Dionne Brand, was recently recommended to me by a good friend of mine, so I’m planning on reading that.

Here’s a sneak peek at the next episode of Killjoys:

Amazon bestseller Veronica Scott is a three-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award and has written a number of science-fiction and fantasy romances. Her latest release is Hostage to the Stars. You can find out more about her and her books at veronicascott.wordpress.com.

MORE ON HEA: If you’re looking for Veronica’s Dark Matter recap

EVEN MORE: Check out Veronica’s interview with Killjoys creator Michelle Lovretta

SPOILERS AHEAD!

This episode, Johnny Be Good, was overshadowed for me by the death at the end (stop reading now if you haven’t seen the show), so my recap may be a bit different this week.

Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin, Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch and Aaron Ashmore as John on Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

The episode opens with a flash-forward: Dutch is in nerve cuffs being tortured in Old Town inside the Royale by a mining union official named Regin. A mob yells for blood outside, held back by brawny monks. I found this segment confusing, probably because it went on so long before the show returned to events of the night before. At the Royale, Pree was trying to help Dutch, arguing with Regin, at one point even brandishing a weapon, offering Dutch, “You, me, blaze of glory,” before he was sent outside. I was impressed with Pree all over again, for his courage trying to protect his friend.

Then we finally go back to last night, where the previous episode ended, and Dutch and D’avin rescuing John and Pawter, who seem to have gotten married in their wall-induced euphoria (or at least are wearing matching rings). Once safely inside Lucy (“I’m a spaceship, John”), Johnny receives sobering explanations about the wall technology and the facts learned on Arkyn last episode. A decision is made to invade Spring Hill and force Jelco to turn the wall off. “Liam Jelco is a murderer, a sadist and a threat to everyone in Old Town. Tonight we bring down his wall and then he dies,” Dutch says with her usual fierce intensity.

Thom Allison as Pree on Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

John and D’av have a few brotherly moments as they gear up. John doesn’t think Dutch will forgive him for lying to her, but D’av says, “Hells, I tried to kill her and we got past it.” He also helpfully explains, “You chose Dr. Crazypants over our Lady of Perpetual Ass-Kicking.”

Dutch and Pawter have their own heart-to-heart. Pawter never seems to realize the full extent of her own actions. “He lied to me,” Dutch says of John. Pawter answers, “I asked him to … I’d never ask him to risk himself …” Girl is so well-intentioned and terminally naïve. “But you already did,” Dutch tells her.

Spring Hill is curiously deserted. John squares off with a snarky computer system named Julian, who sounds like Jelco in artificial intelligence form to me. “Whoever programmed this is an a**hole,” says Johnny as the system cheerfully thwarts him at every turn. D’av gets tangled up in his thoughts. “Well, my a**hole is bigger than his a**hole … I mean you’re smarter than … whatever.” Johnny brings Lucy to bear on the problem, and she attacks Julian with a cold, “It’s on.” Lucy triumphs, of course, with glee, guile and snarky remarks Julian is no match for.

A Jelco hologram shows up and calls for F Squad to fight off the invaders. (Made me think of the old F Troop …)

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch and Luke Macfarlane as D’avin on Killjoys. (Photo: Syfy.com)

Pawter’s in the control room, watching the monitors, seeing people die in Old Town. She calls Delle Seyah for a Qreshi master code to turn the wall off. Again, naïve. Why would Delle help her? And indeed she doesn’t. “These things have been in motion since before we were born,” Delle says. She then outlines the entire Company plot and says millions will die on Westerley as each town is walled in, poisoned and “culled.”

Pawter amps up the wall’s effects to enrage the Old Towners into attacking it while she broadcasts the carnage Quadwide. “I’m Qreshi born but Westerlyn made,” she says. “Everyone needs martyrs,” she whispers in a dire foreshadowing moment, telling the trapped people to “hate the wall, fight the wall.”

Pascal Langdale as Jelco on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Dutch catches Jelco on a lower floor of Spring Hill, which has been converted into a Level Six creation facility. He says he’s just a middleman and a cog in the machine, but if she saves him, he’ll tell her where the rest of the green plasma is. Dutch stays to delay the rampaging citizens who have broken the wall and invaded Spring Hill, while D’av gets Jelco to safety. Which is how Dutch ended up being interrogated at the Royale.

D’av takes Jelco to meet Big Borna, a turncoat who has a huge rocket launcher for rent, which he needs to destroy Spring Hill. Remember her from an earlier episode this season? In a nice touch of irony, he forces Jelco to use his own secret slush fund of “joy” (Quadspeak for money) to pay for the artillery.

Aaron Ashmore as John and Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Back in real time, Regin allows Johnny to talk to Dutch, who says she loves him. She explains there’s a monster inside her, all crazy and hateful, and he’s the only one who stops it from coming out. She just wants him to be happy. He makes a rather unfortunate reference to having his cake and eating it, too, only mentioning Dutch and Pawter. “We’re not baked goods,” Dutch says with genuine amusement.

Enough time has passed so Dutch feels she can explain the “blowing up Spring Hill” plot to Regin, but the mob outside still wants blood, anyone’s blood. Spring Hill is destroyed in the nick of time. (Good thing D’av is such a supersoldier and superb marksman.) Delle Seyah Kendry arrives to negotiate with Pawter and Regin for Westerley’s independence. Is there a saying in the Quad about not trusting the Kendry family? If there isn’t, there should be.

Sarah Power as Pawter on Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Pawter and Johnny take a short walk at one point, and she tells him she has to give up everything, her Qreshi title and lands, to pay for Westerley’s independence and satisfy Delle Seyah’s anger over losing to her. Pawter is still shaken by her own actions, driving so many people to die attacking the wall and says she’s sick of it all. She doesn’t want to fight anymore. Johnny tells her as long as he has a home, she has a home. Sweet kiss ensues.

Inside the Royale, the deal is signed. Regin pulls out a knife to carry out the old custom of cutting his palm and bleeding so he can make a bloody handprint on the document. Pawter follows suit and hands the knife to Delle. Promptly and with no hesitation, other than murmuring, “Pretty Pawter,” Delle Seyah stabs her in the gut. She dies on the floor in a spreading pool of blood, unable to say a word as Johnny begs in vain for instructions on how to save her. The monks, who are actually Sixes (raise your hand if you’re surprised by this. No? Me either), kill everyone else. Dutch and D’av fight but are outnumbered, knock Johnny out and escape.

Inside the Royale, Delle substitutes a fake document and then broadcasts a touching tribute to Pawter and how she died for all of them, to ensure a free Westerley. Remember that need for martyrs? Delle gave them one.

Dutch, D’av and an unconscious Johnny arrive on Lucy to find Fancy Lee waiting for them. He’s allowed Jelco to leave and says they have to come with him, Khlyen is waiting.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

I still have a feeling Delle Seyah might be a Six herself. She’s pretty emotionless.

“You make me so happy I could die.” That was Pawter to Johnny last episode. I have to say I called it — once a character on TV utters those words, they’re inevitably doomed. Poor pretty princess. Her heart was in the right place. I’ll miss her!

What about Pawter’s poor younger sister, though? Is she now a penniless, homeless orphan … or will Delle Seyah make her the Lady of Land Simms and manipulate her as part of the ongoing plots?

CHATTING WITH AARON AND LUKE

Regarding this episode and the finale, of course neither Aaron nor Luke gave spoilers, but Aaron did say, “There’s an outside force asserting its will on the Quad,” and reminded us that Romwell, the collector in the I Love Lucy episode, alludes to that as well. As far as the finale, Luke shared that it will be “the biggest episode so far, the biggest set pieces, and action, with a big reveal.” Aaron added that the last two episodes “are pretty emotional on different fronts” and “Viewers should get a box of tissues ready.” Luke added there’s no “makeout” between his character and Dutch’s in the finale, as they have “bigger fish to fry.”

Aaron Ashmore as John and Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Speculating on a possible season three, which hasn’t as of this writing been approved by SyFy (I know I’m hoping for it), and what’s next for the three main characters, Aaron felt there would continue to be repercussions from the actions of the characters in seasons one and two, and that Johnny would need support from his brother for being “shaken up and off-kilter” after the events with Pawter. Luke hazarded the three would be a “family together,” figuring out the problems. Both actors indicated their respect for,  and trust in, the show’s writers and, as Aaron said at one point in the context of being happy about the journey of his character, are “content to let them do their thing.” Aaron indicated the show has been an “amazing ride … so much fun … hope we get to continue.”

Discussing the team having been torn apart this season, Aaron said that the “heart of the show is about the team … the drama and tension between these people is real … we care about each other so much, we will make it work.”

Pulling back to share a few more lighthearted comments from the interview, Luke and Aaron said of Pascale Langdale, who plays Jelco, that in real life he’s a “cool guy.”

When the actors were asked about favorite one-liners, D’avin’s a**hole line in this episode was brought up, which, Luke said, “was oddly upsetting and weird.”

I asked about the I Love Lucy episode, where the actress who voices Lucy, Tamsen McDonough, got to portray one of the fembots. I reminded Aaron that fans had been shipping Johnny and Lucy to somehow meet. “They wanted it and they got it,” he said. “The AI-Johnny thing happening!” We agreed though that timing was everything. Since John was in love with Pawter by the time of the Lucy episode, I’m guessing the kiss between Lucy-as-fembot and John wasn’t exactly what fans had been hoping for. Both Aaron and Luke spoke warmly of how important Lucy is — the fourth member of the team. Luke said Tamsen is “so connected to the show, loves the show and the world, knows it all … all of us were genuinely thrilled to have her walk onto her ship.”  Aaron said, “Tons and tons of fun.”

Sarah Power as Pawter on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

One more light note: I asked if they could switch identities and play one of the other characters for a day, who would it be? Aaron picked Alvis, because of the “scarback stuff … the cool story line … love the outfit.” Luke said Dutch or Pawter, because of the costumes, and there was much discussion between the three of us for a moment over the amazing dragon-scale-sleeve jacket Pawter got to wear in episode eight when she came to Spring Hill to free Johnny.

Tune in next week after the season finale recap for more snippets from the group interview. Fingers crossed for good news on season three!

Amazon bestseller Veronica Scott is a three-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award and has written a number of science-fiction and fantasy romances. Her latest release is Trapped on Talonque. You can find out more about her and her books at veronicascott.wordpress.com.

MORE ON HEA: If you’re looking for the Dark Matter recap

EVEN MORE: Check out Veronica’s interview with Killjoys creator Michelle Lovretta

SPOILERS AHEAD! (And stick around until the end of the recap for more chatting with stars Aaron Ashmore and Luke Macfarlane. Snippets of their interview were included in last week’s recap, too.)

“When the nights were long and the days were deep, there lived a girl …”

How to Kill Friends and Influence People brings season two to a close, answering many questions, containing a surprise or two and definitely calling for tissues.

Rob Stewart as Khlyen and Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch on Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

As the show opens, we see Aneela running across the snowy fields of Arkyn as Khlyen and young Dutch (or Yala, as she was then) recite a bedtime story to each other. “He was on a quest to feed his people,” Khlyen intones. But he had “disturbed something old, deep under the land … all gifts come with a price … he had awakened an ancient darkness …”

We see scenes of an apparent biological/botanical installation, the high-tech workers wearing lab coats with the insignia of the old corporation. They eat the fruit or berries of the trees grown in the green, and no surprise, they become changed and violent. “This is how it all began,” Khlyen says to Yala as Aneela weeps green tears.

Flash-forward to present day as Dutch and D’av awaken Johnny, whose immediate first words and thoughts are for “Pawter — we have to go look for Pawter.” Sorrowfully, D’avin says, “If I thought she was alive, I wouldn’t have left her.”

Fancy comes down the ladder from Lucy’s upper levels, thoroughly ruining the moment. “Khlyen will be here soon,” he assures the team.

We see Delle Seyah’s broadcast to Old Town, extolling Pawter, saying, “We the Company are committed to the road map for peace she laid out … we’re humbled to declare a holiday in her honor.”

Aaron Ashmore as John and Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Later Johnny and Dutch are sitting in Lucy’s dining room, drinking. He’s understandably upset that Delle is using Pawter’s death for propaganda. He says, “I started to think my world was big enough to include Pawter … that I could be that kind of happy, regular people happy.” Dutch makes it clear she’s with him no matter what he decides to do, whether to bring Delle to justice or to run. She gives him a hug and says, “We can just fly away and never come back.”

Johnny voices what I’m thinking: “Sounds amazing, but we really can’t do that … grieving is for the winners, and we haven’t won yet.”

Meanwhile, D’av and Fancy have been fighting. “Be patient,” is Fancy’s advice. “Be exploding,” is D’avin’s.  No love lost between these two.

Three Black Root Sixes enter Lucy — who has been taken by surprise by their “exotic” technology — and are looking for Khlyen. The situation seems bound to get nasty for our heroes when Khlyen arrives, shoots the Black Root thugs with darts and waits for whatever he hit them with to take effect. I enjoyed the version of Khlyen we see in this episode — deadly but wisecracking, almost light-hearted. He swashbuckles. After studying D’avin’s resistance to the green plasma, he’s brewed up a toxin for killing Sixes and invites Dutch and team to help him save the Quad. “One glorious suicide mission. Who’s in?”

Not a moment of doubt — our heroes are so IN.

Lucy doesn’t appreciate leaked black goo all over her deck from the dead Sixes, but Johnny of course takes a sample to study. Wise precaution.

As the guys clear out the dead, Dutch and Khlyen go off to talk. According to Khlyen, “Aneela is quite a bit insane” because younger people don’t do well with the change into being a Level Six. He says he doesn’t know why Dutch looks like Aneela — hmmm, a possible revelation for season three? They have a nice convoluted discussion about the nature of truth, and then he explains the backstory we’ve all been waiting for about the pending invasion. The Hollan parasite in the plasma becomes sentient when bonded with a human host, but of course said host is no longer entirely human. The Hollan gave the ancestors of the current Nine 10 generations to enjoy themselves, make money, live it up while preparing for the eventual transition and then to be ready to hand over the Quad.

Johnny feels this is all “crazy bullsh*t.”

Khlyen says he’s had centuries to get used to the idea. If there’s no plasma, there’s no reason for the Hollan to come, but Arkyn is now full of Black Root Sixes getting ready for the handover. So Dutch can’t just drop in and poison all the plasma on Arkyn. Khlyen conveniently knows of one other source of pure Arkyn plasma. And even better, if the parent plasma dies, do does the spawn. (I have the feeling if we spent 10 episodes centered on just Khlyen, we still wouldn’t get to the bottom of all the mysteries he knows.) When the 12 monks went to Arkyn to fight the devil, they also stole a tree growing in pure plasma, which Aneela had sworn to get back.

“We need to find that tree.”

Who knows about mystic trees? Right, time to consult Alvis. He, however, tells Dutch in disbelief, “So the Twelve went off to fight the devil and came back with a tree? We’re sadomasochistic theosophers, not botanists.”

“You worship a mystical tree. You really can’t see the connection?” Thank you, Dutch, for voicing my exact thought at this moment. I was surprised Alvis wasn’t immediately on board with the concept.

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch and Morgan Kelly as Alvis on Killjoys. (Photo: Christos Kalohoridis, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

He does take her to an ancient book chock full of poetry, remarks about the devil and other conflicting ramblings. To his horror, which was a great moment by actor Morgan Kelly (interview!), Dutch rips out the page with the drawing of the tree, holds it up to the light and detects a star map in the holes pricked into the illustration.

Of course only Khlyen knows what’s in that particular area of space. It’s the Archive, an ultrahigh-security facility that has been the “choice of the elite and paranoid since the J colonies began” for storing valuables. Safe-deposit boxes gone high-tech.

Dutch takes charge, telling him it’s a classic Killjoy operation. I loved the subtle way Johnny and D’avin drew in to flank her, silently emphasizing that they were a team and ready to follow her lead.  As far as how she’s going to gain access, she reminds him she’s “a g**damned Queen.” Great moment. Michelle Lovretta, the show’s creator, has spoken in an interview with the TV Junkies about how this season was a story of three princesses — Pawter, Dutch and Delle — and their fates, so I loved hearing it said in so many words by Dutch. (I’ve interviewed Michelle, too.)

We briefly see Delle Seyah giving orders in Old Town, tensely taking a call from Khlyen and being reassured she can still go through the process. “Aging is so bourgeois,” she mutters. I found it interesting she wasn’t yet a Six, but clearly had gone through the toughening up to survive transition. She was so cold-blooded about the dreadful acts she committed.

Luke Macfarlane as D’avin and Sean Baek as Fancy Lee on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Arriving at the Archive, Johnny instructs Lucy to “fly like a rich bitch.” Once inside, Dutch presents herself as Yalena Yardeen, member of a family that had fallen on hard times but was now on the rise again, as Khlyen flashes a giant jewel. Dejj, the diminutive but unctuous salesman … I mean, concierge, takes them into the inner sanctum to sign up for a vault, while D’avin and Fancy have to cool their heels outside, surrounded by guards. Of course a fight breaks out between our heroes and the guards, who inevitably lose. In praise of D’avin’s fighting skills, Fancy says, “I didn’t hate what you did there.” As they penetrate the sublevels of Archive, the men continue their mutual hazing. “I’m physiologically superior now,” Fancy states. “You’re a Six, not a 10,” D’avin says without missing a beat. Point to D’av!

Their job is to enable Lucy to hack the Archive system, which she does, substituting Dutch’s DNA record for Aneela’s. “Other Dutch is never not going to be a weird thing for me,” says Johnny, right before Lucy is targeted by two Black Root ships.

Dejj becomes suspicious of Dutch because she doesn’t act royal enough. Guards flood into the office. Khlyen tells Dutch it’s her show, so she tangles with them while Khlyen and Dejj calmly discuss the fact that the latter has a bomb in his chest, tied to his heartbeat, so he can’t be killed without blowing up Archive. Dejj has tea and Khlyen eventually joins Dutch in some well-choreographed fighting. “Admit it, that was fun,” he says.

Off they run to Aneela’s vault, which contains the most beautiful tree ever. I so wanted Alvis to have a chance to see this tree of trees. Khlyen says the green tries to perfect the organisms it invades. Ah, but Aneela has set a trap, and the vault teleports itself into low orbit around a faraway sun. Harsh, burning light comes in, singeing the tree and making the vault unbearably hot. Using the huge gemstone to focus the light, Khlyen burns out the vault controls and gets them back to Archive.

Aaron Ashmore as John on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

After telling Lucy she needs to have her dancing shoes on, Johnny flies in, under, around and through Archive, hotly pursued by the two Black Root ships, while being shot at by the Archive gun turrets. I thought flying through asteroids in the earlier episodes was a Star Wars callback but not only did this battle remind me of every encounter ever with the Death Star, there was a specific moment when one Black Root ship exploded and veered off like a certain TIE fighter on Luke Skywalker’s tail — fun stuff. There were also echoes of Battlestar Galactica and even Top Gun. I think Lucy would be a worthy descendant of the deadly F-14 fighter planes, don’t you?

D’av and Fancy are pinned down in the service tunnels, still bantering of course. “No offense, I always imagined my last stand, blaze of glory being with my brother, not you,” D’av grumps.  “I heal — you’re the one having an existential crisis,” Fancy says with his usual calm hauteur. “I’ll tell everyone you died sexy.”

D’av turns Fancy into his reluctant human shield, and they’re able to clear the tunnel of the enemy.

Dutch injects the toxin into the green around the tree, but the poison’s not working. Johnny and Lucy inform her she has to poison a Six first because the human blood acts as a catalyst.

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch on Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Uh oh, only one Six anywhere near the vault — Khlyen. Dutch is horrified. He says it’s his penance for failing Aneela. The first green plasma-induced bonds, like his, were imperfect and the person kept some independence. Aneela tried to improve the process in her awful lab on Arkyn where the dead monks were found. When Khlyen saw Dutch as a child, he knew she was his chance to make things right, which he seemed to believe meant training her to survive the transition to Six better than Aneela did. But then he met D’avin and had a new option — creating the toxin. “There are other sources of green in the J, but that’s not your fight … I have nothing left to teach you.”

“I’m not ready to let you go,” Dutch says.

As Khlyen bleeds black into the pool, they recite the opening lines of the fairy tale together one more time and your faithful recapper cries. But Dutch cried, too. Khlyen dies, the pool of green in the vault dies, the green on Arkyn dies and Fancy (and presumably all the other Arkyn-spawned Sixes) reverts to human again. I was surprised he didn’t die, but this way we get to have more Fancy in season three, so no complaints from me.

Back on Lucy later … Dutch dreams of Aneela, but it’s Johnny who actually comes in, ready to offer comfort. “I’m sure it’s more complicated than I can ever understand, but speaking as a member of the Sh*tty Dad Club, you don’t have to forgive someone to miss them and you don’t need anyone’s permission to love someone you hate.”

She’s consoled and belatedly remembers his loss of Pawter, so … off to the Royale for drinks, to toast the win. Sitting there, Johnny has a flashback to Pawter’s death. He spends a few moments with Pree, talking about Delle Seyah. “Delle Seyah must have a mouth full of honey candy with all the sweet promises she’s making,” Pree says. Johnny is horrified that people actually believe her. “There’s a lot of charm in that snake,” Pree opines. They drink to Pawter: “To Red, may we all be so lovely, may we all be so loved.” Pree has the best lines.

Johnny leaves the Royale to confront Delle Seyah in the alley where she’s expecting to meet Khlyen. “Technology is a disloyal bitch,” John says as she realizes he sent the previous message, not Khlyen. “Greed trumps caution.” She tries to brazen the moment out and make her usual  escape from justice, but he shoots her. “I’m not a hero. I just loved her,” John says of Pawter before walking away. Delle’s saccharine and phony announcement about Pawter plays on the Old Town speakers as she (we hope) dies. But we didn’t actually see that last breath.

Back on Lucy, John packs up rapidly to leave, but Lucy refuses to open the door. She tells him he booked eight long-haul flights to eight different faraway places. “Were you not going to say goodbye? Did I do something?” She tries hard to understand as he explains he did something unforgivable that he can’t bring to Dutch and D’avin. “I forgive you,” Lucy says. “It doesn’t work like that,” John answers, tears in his eyes. “I forgive you,” she says again. “You gotta let me go, girl.” “Goodbye, John.” The door opens.

And your recapper has tears in her eyes again. Aaron Ashmore does the most amazing acting all through this episode, and Tamsen McDonough (interview!) convinces us that Lucy the ship has genuine feels as well, using only her voice.

But Lucy has one last surprise for John. She’s summoned Clara, the cool chick with the hackbot arm, to be his wingman on this run. “Hey, nerd … I call shotgun.” Oh, the adventures these two can have next season! For starters, they steal Khlyen’s Black Root ship and are OFF.

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch on Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Brief shot of Aneela on a big ship, obviously in perfect health, sipping green sludge. So the death of Arkyn green plasma spawn did not kill her. Come on, no one thought it would, did they? That’s season three stuff!

Unaware of all this drama, Dutch lays out the two choices she sees to D’avin, Pree and Fancy. “Take our local win, hope the fight doesn’t come back to us, die old and boring in our beds.”

“You make it sound so sexy,” D’avin says.

“Or take the chance Khlyen and Pawter bought us, make their deaths count … let’s stop them all … I don’t want to win just one battle (Dutch stabs the toxin dart into the bar) … I want a whole bloody war. Who’s in?”

ME! (Raising hand from position on couch.) Bring it on.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

The music is always so perfect for the mood on Killjoys. You can find the songs on Tunefind.com.

I appreciated that we got to spend good time with Fancy, Alvis and Pree in the finale. More Bellus next season, though, please!

I’m really wondering what will happen with the Nine next season. Pawter, Arune and (maybe) Delle are dead. The baby from season one who was the sole heir to another family’s land was Delle’s ward, remember? And she assassinated a bunch of the others in season one, presumably to install people she could control, so who’s left? And what role will they play in the wider conflict?

There has to be a reason we now know Pree is a former warlord. If Michelle Lovretta throws something into an episode, she’s not just throwing it away or using it as a red herring.

CHATTING WITH AARON ASHMORE AND LUKE MACFARLANE

When asked if they do much ad-libbing on the set, Aaron said, “Not really, the writing is very specific and funny … don’t need to ad-lib … it’s not encouraged … They spend a lot of time working this in the writers’ room.” Luke added, “It’s a slippery slope if you start ad-libbing too much.”

Aaron Ashmore as John and Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Their characters’ strengths and weaknesses? Luke said D’avin’s strength was loyalty and his weakness was stubbornness. Aaron answered that Johnny’s strength was loyalty and that he was “torn apart this season, but at the end of the day, loyalty is always there.” He thought Johnny’s weakness was a slight level of insecurity.

Favorite thing about Johnny? Aaron said, “You don’t see it often, but Johnny has a slight edge of unpredictability. He’s a caring, compassionate guy, but push him too far and he kills people in cold blood.”

On the subject of Sabine reappearing, Luke said he’d love to see her back, but they don’t really know. The actress (Tori Anderson) has another show of her own now, No Tomorrow, and will be busy.

Speculating on the ideal happy ending for the characters, presumably way down the road, Aaron said, “The three of us returning to our planet, living off the land by a lake … having families … growing old together.” The characters had “messed up family lives,” so being one big family … but there’s a long way to go.”

And for inquiring minds who want to know, Luke revealed that the green goo and eyeballs from the Level Six whose head D’avin exploded in a previous episode were green-colored vanilla pudding.

I’ve really enjoyed sharing these recaps all season with my fellow fans and can’t wait for summer 2017 to dive back in for season three!

Amazon bestseller Veronica Scott is a three-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award and has written a number of science-fiction and fantasy romances. Her latest release is Trapped on Talonque. You can find out more about her and her books at veronicascott.wordpress.com.

MORE ON HEA: Looking for Veronica’s Dark Matter recap?

EVEN MORE: See Veronica’s other Killjoys and sci-fi posts

Boondoggie, the first episode of Killjoys season three, felt more like two hours to me than merely an hour with commercials. I mean that as a high compliment, not a complaint — there’s so much going on in the Quad right now, it’s incredible and my head is spinning. The episode was jam-packed with events, threads, hints, teasers, new people and places. There are a few SPOILERS in this post.

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch and Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin in Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

We have two parallel stories going on, with Johnny off on his own journey to recover from Pawter’s death and his presumed assassination of Delle Seyah Kendry at the end of last season, which leads to him and us discovering more about the fascinating world of the “hackmods,” who are basically cybernetically enhanced humans. And Dutch of course is pursuing her self-declared war against the aliens Hullen, who were the source of the green goo that created enhanced Level Six Killjoys last season. At one point in the episode, a Hullen pawn claims to be “humanity’s replacement.” Dutch takes issue with that, referring to herself as the monster to be feared and telling the Hullen-infested woman “war is coming … and we don’t like to lose.”

This season I’m not going to fully recap entire episodes in detail, but I’ll share my topmost observations and thoughts about the events of each episode.

I loved seeing Dutch and all the rest of the gang in the first few moments — D’av, Pree, Alvis and Fancy, all of them being badass and working together with a lot of zinging one-liners. You can’t be successful in the Quad and rise in the Killjoy ranks if you aren’t a master of the snappy repartee. (Turin calling Dutch Assassin Barbie was a classic. But what happened to his gorgeous hair? D’av teases him about the haircut on behalf of the viewers.) I did miss Bellus — she’s a force to be reckoned with and surely needs to play some role in this war, right?

Lucy, Johnny’s ship, spoke at 17 minutes into the episode — I’ve missed her and her own brand of shiply snark.

Tommie-Amber Pirie as Olli in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

Fancy got to display his previously introduced skills as an inventor of nifty gadgets that save the day, like the stunner-and-motion-sensitive boomerang (“Patent pending,” he says). I missed that aspect of his personality in season two when he was mostly a souped-up Level Six doing physical dirty work for the now deceased Khylen. Dutch needs a gadget guy, especially with Johnny off on his own quest. And D’av needs a foil to trade insults and snark with, which he and Fancy do so well.

Pree and Alvis were efficient but not particularly front and center this episode. However, I’m sure we’ll see more of each man as the season goes on. I like the way Michelle Lovretta, the creator and showrunner, and her writers allow the secondary characters their moments to shine, so I can be patient. We did have a brief stopover at Pree’s Royale bar in Old Town, apparently repaired and rebuilt as good as new. The group needs their hangout and some downtime in this expanded war.

Threads that will pay off more, I’m sure, include the new oversight team that’s come in to audit the local RAC branch and ostensibly figure out why they’ve recently lost so many agents. Dutch assumes these people are Hullen, and I’m with her on that, but Turin isn’t so convinced. Banyon, the woman leading that team, feels to me like the season three version of the gone-but-not-lamented Delle Seyah. (Although we never did see the high-born Qreshi die on screen … hmmm.)

Tommie-Amber Pirie as Olli, Aaron Ashmore as Johnny and Sean Fowler as Cutter in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

Another new supporting character has been added — Pippin, the black-market expert, who seems like a version of early Johnny and maybe something of a replacement for him in Dutch’s mind. A sort of bumbling younger brother with skills of his own that she can watch over and nurture? Not a romantic interest, thank goodness. I was more or less OK with him. He and his anxieties and foibles were annoying at the beginning, but by the end of the episode, he’s carved out a spot for himself in the resistance to Hullen domination and seemingly found his courage.

Johnny’s lost Clara, the hackmod, somehow as the episode begins, which was frustrating to me because I loved that character and was looking forward to a lot more of her on screen this season. I didn’t feel it was made crystal clear how the two got separated. Instead, he finds Ollie, who unaccountably has the Alice the Arm weapon of death, which belongs to Clara, attached to her now. Ollie swears she has no idea how she got the arm, or where Clara is.

Aaron Ashmore as John and Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch in Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkiem Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

Much of the episode was spent exploring the hackmod culture in Rat City. I think this could spin off into its own series, frankly. As Johnny says when the various types of hacks are being explained to him (Owls, Grips, etc.): “Collect the whole set and have some badass superheroes.” Exactly! The hackmods have their own society, prejudices and rituals, including a hatred for the Basics, like Johnny. During the episode John has to undergo a hack modification after he’s uncovered as a Basic human and chooses what appears to be a finger-sized light saber. I want one! Please? So cool (and apparently not too painful to receive, which is another point in its favor).

I was a bit bemused by the hackmods. It seems that other people pay to have humans modified at the Factory for their own nefarious purposes (and maybe even kidnapped and sold into this form of cyborg slavery, if I’m remembering Clara’s origin story right from last season), so why are there so many hackmods running around free? Are they all escapees? I got that Rat City is their sanctuary in the Quad, although people are disappearing, as Clara did, but I feel loose ends there. Ollie sums the hackmods (and herself) up as being “superhuman indentured labor.” Clara is apparently on a mission to take down the Factory and ensure there are no more hackmods created, so I’m wondering how this all ties into the larger story of Dutch’s war against the Hullen. Hackmods could be useful allies.

Prince Amponsah as Havigan and Sean Fowler as Cutter in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

Havigan, the Hackmod bar owner in Rat City, is a riveting new character, a pillar of strength and advocacy for his people, and the actor playing him, Prince Amponsah, has an incredible personal backstory of overcoming adversity after being badly burned in a fire. I hope we see more of him in the future episodes.

Ollie is a pleasant person on the surface who I don’t fully trust yet. Certainly not as much as Johnny trusts her, based on not much more than the instincts of his own sweet nature, as far as I can see. Although, he boasts how his job as a Killjoy requires him to be good at detecting lies and doesn’t feel Ollie is lying. He has a tendency to adopt needy people and try to “fix” them and their problems, which doesn’t always turn out well for him. Johnny does share an important truth about himself with her, when they’re telling secrets in the dark — “People keep leaving me.” Point of order, he left Dutch, even if the two of them are doing complex holographic messages to each other across the Quad. I hope Ollie isn’t going to be Johnny’s doomed love interest in this season. I personally ship him with Clara. Or Lucy if she gets human form again!

Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin and Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch in Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

The episode had some good sleight-of-hand scheming by Dutch, when it comes to a beacon that can sense Hullen-infested humans. There was also the reveal that the Hullen left 36 empty spacecraft parked on Westerley. Not to mention the fact D’av strides out onto the landing field, gets into one of the ships as if he owns it, followed by the vessel cloaking itself and taking off. Unclear if Dutch knew he was doing this experiment. So what unexpected plot points will arise from D’av’s surprise move?

My final note — the Captain Apex comic book returns! Dutch was reading it! Thank you, Ms. Lovretta, for giving us closure on that favorite plot point of mine from season one.

Amazon bestseller Veronica Scott is a seven-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award and has written a number of science-fiction and fantasy romances. Her latest release is Danger in the Stars. You can find out more about her and her books at veronicascott.wordpress.com.

MORE ON HEA: See more of Veronica’s Killjoys and sci-fi romance posts

I have mixed feelings about A Skinner, Darkly, this week’s episode of Killjoys. (SPOILERS ahead!) Practically my first note to myself Friday night was that this was an episode where I’d hang on, trust in showrunner Michelle Lovretta and her writers and wait for the threads to come together. And actually, the final 10 minutes wrapped everything up and all threads were woven taut and tight, ready for future developments.

Aaron Ashmore as Johnny in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

I really wonder how this season’s plot would have run if the same actor had returned as Clara, the Hackmod. I have no idea why another woman is playing the role, and I suppose Johnny would have ended up in Rat City anyway, dealing with the Hackmods, but I felt like there were a few extra-convoluted twists and turns required to explain Ollie-as-Clara. I never quite bought it; however, I remain fascinated by the Hackmod society and backstory in general. The turning point where Havigan and the others decided to step out of their comfort zone and take a stand to help Johnny and Ollie was satisfying. I still think they could be a great spinoff series, especially as a Hackmod colony is being established.

Viktoria Modesta as Niko in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

I could have done without the horror storyish aspects of the spa where “reconstruction meets regeneration.” I’m just not that big a horror fan. Spa owner Niko and her “creepy uncle’s basement” of horrors that Ollie uncovered was pretty brutal. I get that life contains Bad Things in the Quad and surrounding areas — I just have to avert my eyes when the gore is onscreen for too long! Enough with the skinners and all those icky details. Niko was eerily insane and quite effective, as she slid back and forth from reasonably supporting her Hackmod peers in her own distorted way, to being outright insane with big hair, a ring I covet and great shoes. Her personal enhancements were cool, and she was certainly stylish as she pursued her own agenda focused on vengeance against hackmod owners. And she oh-so-conveniently had that map of where all the green goo pools in the galaxy are located, as well as the tidbit that Killjoys are guarding every one.

Viktoria Modesta did a terrific job of being eerily sane/insane. I also loved the song backing her segment of the show, Prototype, which she wrote, as I understand it. The music on Killjoys is always spot-on for enhancing the emotion of the moments.

Aaron Ashmore as Johnny and Viktoria Modesta as Niko in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

Johnny got to do his favorite thing — play an undercover role as part of unearthing the truth, which almost never turns out well for him. This time was no exception. He also got to save himself from disaster later with his very own finger-laser mod as he proudly proclaimed “Johnny ain’t no Basic.” He does need D’av around to take him down a peg or two at these moments. And he got off a great line about letting the “dark sciencing commence.”

As Turin put it, Johnny was on an “emo walkabout,” but we missed all the parts where he mourned Pawter and came out of his funk. I felt like he and Clara must have had a whole slew of interesting adventures and escapades between seasons one and two, and we arrived after all that was done. He was basically ready to go home after he cleaned up a few details to make sure Ollie-Clara would be all right and told her as much toward the end of the episode.

Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin and Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

Meanwhile, Turin pushed Dutch and D’av into trying to find some new nerds (did anyone else get tired of hearing that term tossed around endlessly in this episode? No? Just me, I guess) after a fairly disastrous encounter with a computer containing valuable intel. Off they go to “terrorize some lab rats” and see who might be able to join the team, but not to replace Johnny, as Dutch makes very clear that no one can do that.

I remain a bit puzzled as to why we need new people on the team, when we didn’t see Pree, Fancy (who surely understands technical matters) or Alvis at all in this episode. I was also underwhelmed by the two male lab techs, who seemed like the junior varsity from The Big Bang Theory. Zephyr, the female scientist, grew on me as the episode went along.

The whole adventure with whatever they were supposed to be doing in that weird warehouse-factory with broken-down systems and random menaces felt off to me, so I was relieved to learn it was just a virtual reality simulation. The events did seem like something Turin would have conceived — not fully thought out, focused narrowly on certain aspects of the challenge and failing to allow for independent thinking. Or biology vs. hard tech. Lucky Zeph was there. A mild Kobayashi Maru Star Trek reference anyone?

Patrick Garrow as Turin, Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin and Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

Enjoy your two less-than-stellar lab techs, Turin, is all I can say. You deserve them. Although, I will give the guys props for persisting during the exercise and working through their fear. I guess they could have Killjoy potential with the right mentoring along the way.

I was not happy with the way the one woman — who actually figured out the whole thing — was treated. Zeph was barely allowed to get a word in edgewise and then was told she wasn’t selected because the mission had changed to “survival” vs. just fixing broken tech. But she knew they’d all survive because she figured out the predicament was fake. (And much as I love D’av, the way he acted toward her during the simulation and assumed she had the hots for him instead of listening to her deductions, was insulting. She needs a scene where she gets to tell him off, in my opinion.) I was surprised Dutch didn’t stand up for Zephyr, but then of course the two meet later in the Royale (why couldn’t we have had at least one or two lines from Pree? Does he not tend the bar anymore?) and Dutch does recruit her for Team Awesome Force. OK then.

Backtracking a moment to Turin’s comment about sexual tension, I’m not seeing that this season so far and I miss it. All those emotions crackling between Dutch and D’av in season one … now their working relationship feels matter-of-fact and platonic. There’s more emotion between Lucy the ship and Johnny. As she says about missing him, “If ships could cry, I would have rusted.”

Lovely to see John back with Dutch and D’av, on board Lucy, ready to step into the fight. Perhaps now he’s returned, life will have more emotional moments aboard the ship? Johnny always seems to be the catalyst for things to happen. One can only hope. Romance novelist here needs at least a smidgeon of hearts and flowers! Or whatever the equivalent might be in the Quad.

Aaron Ashmore as Johnny and Viktoria Modesta as Niko in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

The final few minutes, on board Aneela’s Hullen ship, with a rejuvenated Delle Seyah Kendry (I knew she wasn’t reliably dead!) were exciting, and I can’t wait for more of that thread. Wait until she and Johnny meet again. And haughty, full-of-herself Qreshi noble Delle Seyah isn’t going to be giving orders to Aneela, a woman so powerful she bathes in Hullen green goo. It’ll be fascinating to watch that relationship develop. I’m curious to see what role Aneela has in mind for Ms. Kendry.

The first episode of the season was so jam-packed and fast-paced, while this hour meandered a bit and spent a lot of time in Rat City and in virtual reality. I’m impatient to get to the heart of the war against the Hullen and the emotional ties that bind Dutch, D’av, Johnny and Lucy, with Pree, Alvis and Fancy not far behind. Lots of mysteries to unravel with Aneela and why she and Dutch could be twins. Where did D’av go in that alien fighter last week?

Hopefully now the pieces are all in the right places and the real battles can begin.

Bring on episode three!

Amazon bestseller Veronica Scott is a seven-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award and has written a number of science-fiction and fantasy romances. Her latest release is Danger in the Stars. You can find out more about her and her books at veronicascott.wordpress.com.

MORE ON HEA: See more of Veronica’s Killjoys and sci-fi romance posts

A side trip that advanced the main plot, a few emotional moments and some time with the always dangerous Aneela. This episode,  The Hullen Have Eyes, accomplished a few things along the season three path. SPOILERS AHEAD!

Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin and Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch in Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

I enjoyed the opening, with crisp dialogue and verbal fencing between the new agent in charge at the RAC, Banyon Grey, and Johnny, as she debates whether to reinstate him. Her main goal seems to be getting him to turn on Dutch, but she’s no match for Johnny. The subject of Pawter comes up — finally! — and we see that John still has deep feelings about her death, which I thought was a much-needed moment. But, as Johnny says to Banyon when she tries to lean on him a bit too hard, “Why make me your problem when I can be your poster boy?” Good point. If she truly wants any of the other missing Killjoys to return, she can’t very well be mean to him.

She makes him lose his personal hackmod enhancement, though — no more fingertip laser.

I think the show runs more smoothly with John back where he’s supposed to be, not roaming Rat City on his own, splintered from Dutch and D’av.

He wants to go off on a good old warrant-serving adventure just to shake the dust off, but Dutch has other plans. There is a war coming, after all. Now Johnny gets to meet Zephyr, the new member of the team and, as expected, rivalry, snark and scientific insults ensue. He’s not happy to have her around. He’s even less happy that Dutch wants him to tutor Zeph. “I came back to team, not teach,” he says grumpily.

I have to say I still don’t see what we need Zeph for. It occurs to me that maybe she’s the kind of character who goes through a giant arc, from her present state of acting pretty unlikable, having poor social skills and being an annoying know-it-all, to becoming a true team member bonded with everyone and then dies in some self-sacrificing moment at the end? I guess we’ll see. Not a big Zeph fan, can you tell? I think it’s the stereotypical way she’s being portrayed right now that bothers me. The actress, Kelly McCormack, does the best she can with the material and provides flashes of the person Zeph could be, if given a chance. Meanwhile, I’m getting weary of all the “nerd-bashing” lines.

She does receive a lot of grudging mentoring from Johnny during the episode. “Nerds save the day way more than people think.” Zeph does her thing again at a key moment where she takes independent action to do what she thinks is best (and also maybe save her own skin), and although it turns out fine by the end of the episode, John isn’t impressed. The job isn’t just to be right all the time, he tells her, she has to protect Dutch and D’av. He does try repeatedly to get her to shift her way of thinking through problems, which I thought were some of his finest moments.

Although Lucy and I might disagree, given her sarcastic comment to him toward the end of the episode, “I missed your way with smart women.”

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch in Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

Backing up a bit, the team of four takes a Hullen ship that Zeph has been studying and returns to its last destination, which turns out to be a weird, 1950s-ish settlement on a planet with major solar flare and radiation problems. The Hullen used the place to teach its newly converted recruits to fake human emotions so they could blend in with the population of the Quad. Turns out human slaves were left behind when the facility suddenly shut down, with one Hullen left to watch over them. The Unseeing, as they’re now known, have gone subterranean to avoid the radiation, the older ones are blind and the younger ones have been artificially deprived of their eyesight by the elders because the blindness is a gift. Or some logic along those lines. They all hope Dutch, D’av and Johnny are the Undying Ones returned, so the team tries to play along, which is the kind of subterfuge that always goes awry. The Last Seer, as the Hullen who was left behind is called, easily figures out they’re not who they say they are. He’s a piece of work who’s been enjoying life a little too fully as a total dictator, the only person with vision … but along the way, he’s lost his Hullen mojo. He’s been “cleansed” of the green goo’s effects.

Quin, a rebellious girl who wants to help the team, takes D’av and Johnny to an old, buried Hullen ship, where they learn Khylen was the one who shut down the training facility and left the Last Seer in charge. Turns out there’s a mysterious “Remnant” of unknown stuff that Khylen left behind. The girl also tells D’av she’s met him before. Although she’s artificially blinded, apparently his deep voice and manly chin are memorable and unmistakable. This planet is where he went when we saw him take the Hullen ship for a joy ride earlier in the season, which he has no memory of doing. Right before he died, Khylen imprinted D’av with a few deeply buried orders, which makes me wonder if we’re going to see D’av do more unpredictable things at odd moments during the rest of the season. Nice to have a wild card!

Eventually, Zeph does her “saving the day” maneuver, returning with the Hullen ship that she’s figured out how to control, sort of. Our team leaves the planet, taking the Remnant and Quin. After doing a bit of minor surgery, Zeph restores Quin’s eyesight, whereupon she promptly informs D’av she thought he’d be better looking, in a moment I personally found on the unnecessarily mean side. The plan apparently is to park this girl with Alvis and the monks on Leith, as they’ve done with other poor souls like the two young brothers from the destroyed outer space school last season. Convenient. I couldn’t help thinking Alvis must have a special wing of the monastery for the refugees Dutch constantly brings him.

Zeph is entrusted with figuring out the secrets of the Remnant, as she’s the biology specialist. At least the team does recognize her expertise.

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch, Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin and Aaron Ashmore as John in Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

And at the end of the episode, Dutch, D’av and Johnny are toasting the fact that all the Hullen ships are apparently programmed to obey D’av, courtesy of Khylen, which bodes well for the war they want to wage on the Hullen and Aneela.

Speaking of her, I enjoyed the scenes on the Hullen ship with Delle Seyah, who is having a very hard time not being in charge of anything. Quite the contrary in fact — made to clean messy, bloody decks and condescended to by Gander, Aneela’s lieutenant. How the mighty Qreshi has fallen. Oh, wait a minute, Aneela tells her there are two types of Hullen, and she and Delle Seyah are apparently of the queen variety, while everyone else, including the full-of-himself Gander, are high-functioning drones. I could see the sneaky wheels turning in Delle Seyah’s head as the episode progressed. Gander’s going to lose his head at some point — he’s already on Delle’s blacklist, have no doubts — and even Aneela better watch out for our Qreshi noblewoman. A hive has only one queen, right?

Aneela doesn’t react well at all to Delle Seyah’s news that Khylen is dead and even seems to momentarily give up, before a pep talk from Delle that “queens rise.” It probably helps that Delle assures Aneela she knows how to hurt Dutch. Not that anyone dares to actually utter Dutch’s name in front of the quick-to-go-insane-and-slash-everyone Aneela.

I’m guessing Johnny will be the weak point in Dutch’s armor. Anyone want to take that bet? No?

Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin in Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

I was pleased that D’av and Johnny spent a few brotherly moments while in the jail at the old Hullen training facility, discussing how John was the one who left this time and how that feels emotionally to both men. Remember all the angst between these two in season one, when Johnny finally blew up at D’av and unloaded all his resentments over D’av running away from home originally? Well, there wasn’t that much anger this time around, but D’av made a few good points. More to come, I’m sure.

One other stray thought — is it just me or have Dutch’s fighting skills gone a bit rusty?

Again, where are Pree, Alvis and Fancy?

My favorite line of the episode, among many, many terrific pieces of banter and dialogues: “Words matter.” That was from Johnny. Yes, yes, they do. Well said, Killjoy. See you next episode!

Amazon bestseller Veronica Scott is a seven-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award and has written a number of science-fiction and fantasy romances. Her latest release is Danger in the Stars. You can find out more about her and her books at veronicascott.wordpress.com.

MORE ON HEA: See more of Veronica’s Killjoys and sci-fi romance posts

The Lion, the Witch and the Warlord felt very much to me like a classic Killjoys episode, hitting all the right notes and keeping the characters true to themselves. This episode also seemed to involve a lot of truth telling that’s been needed. And Dutch very explicitly shows that her skills are still at the highest level. As she says, she trained for Level 6. Girl’s still got it. Warning: SPOILERS ahead.

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

It didn’t hurt that early in the episode we were at the Royale bar for Johnny’s initiation and celebration of achieving Level 5 as a Killjoy. Although, as Johnny said, “Getting a promotion when your bosses might be evil parasites kinda takes the yay out of it.” Still, the moment made a nice callback to relatively simpler times when we first met Dutch and John. I was surprised how much he’d actually cared about becoming a Level 5 and how hard the news hit him when Turin let slip that Dutch had been “rank blocking” his promotion for a long time.

Of course, this being the Quad, the occasion didn’t stay happy for too long, with some strange Killjoys showing up to arrest John on a black warrant for the murder of Delle Seyah. It was amusing to watch everyone deny vehemently that John could ever have done such a thing, while he stood there basically admitting he did do it. And he’s not sorry either. A major melee ensues, with Dutch, John and Pree making use yet again of the handy-dandy escape tunnel behind the bar. D’av stays behind to hold the fort and beat answers out of people with the help of Pree’s new bartender/maybe boyfriend, Gared. (We saw him before, trying to take over the Royale, but he and Pree obviously kissed and made up.)

Lucy “scooches’ the trio from the tunnel safely into an asteroid field far away to figure out next steps. I loved Johnny’s explanation to Dutch about why he loves asteroids. “They’re hard and full of secrets … like you.” OK, then.

Pree solves the “where to go, what to do next, how can we raise an army to fight the Hullen” questions with the information that he was once a warlord in the practically mythological Farren forces. These would be the “most badass outlaw mercenaries in the J,” who fight for honor and for each other. There’d been a mention of his having been a warlord in season two, so it was great to have the hint pay off now. Personally, I think Pree can do anything and carry it off with style and panache, so I wasn’t too surprised.

Aaron Ashmore as John and Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

When next we see them on Ohron, the ice planet where the Farren hang out, Pree has grown out his hair and is very blond and buff and tough, which he says is “all about making an entrance.” John feels that Pree is a “cave of wonders.” I have a feeling we haven’t begun to explore all the many facets of Preema Dezz.

Along with the fact he was the former warlord, Pree omitted the information that the new warlord was his ex and that they’d parted under less-than-congenial circumstances. (Pree faked his death so Lachlan is really upset to find out now that Pree is still alive. Even if Pree took the action so Lachlan could assume his rightful place at the head of the Farren. Even if doing so “burned a hole in his heart,” as Pree says. No apology accepted here.) The tone is established when Pree and Lachlan share a passionate kiss and then immediately shoot each other in non-lethal fashion. Pree will have to go on trial for his life, and Dutch and John will have to be the two champions, with the stakes being Pree’s life vs. the Farren signing up to Dutch’s war. She gives a highly impassioned speech about why Lachlan should join her, which reminded me a bit of the president’s inspiration speech in the movie Independence Day. And then she concludes by asking him where the honor would be in killing a good man for a broken heart.

Aaron Ashmore as John in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

Apparently, Lachlan gets hangry if he doesn’t eat often enough, and the challenge is ON, despite Dutch’s deathless words. He tells Dutch and John they have to fight three rounds, one each for the body, mind and spirit. John is curiously determined to win, even though if he does, Pree dies. Dutch is Not Amused. They each win one round, which I felt was fair. Then for the third round they drink “mind jack,” and the truth-telling session begins as the drug hits. I felt this scene was the heart of the episode and I loved it. John begins by telling Dutch he knows she kept him from getting his Level 5 and it just escalates from there, which each saying hurtful but true things. We all knew the air had to be cleared between these two, with John having run off after shooting Delle. She says when she first met him he was a “lover of ponies, a sunshine optimist, not a murderer” and she didn’t want to watch him turn into a murderer (since Level 5’s kill people). He ripostes that he’s not the angel on her shoulder and it isn’t his job to “keep her from going full Khylen and killing everyone.” Going deeper, he says she “just wants to prove to dead daddy K that she’s better than Aneela,” and furthermore, he doesn’t care about the Quad.

“Then why did you come back?” Dutch asks what we all want to know.

And … someone breaks into the tent-arena with sleep gas and knocks everyone out. I guess the badass mercenaries got too caught up in the he said/she said drama to keep proper sentry watch.

Turns out the intruder is Flik, the Killjoy D’av was beating up on at the Royale a while ago. He’d managed to bug John’s drink so he could follow them. While our heroes are chained up waiting for the annoying Flik to stick John into cryosleep, there’s a fun scene as they work to get loose and John admits he came back because of Dutch and because he believes the only way the Hullen will ever be defeated is if she leads the war. All is forgiven, thank goodness.

Kelly McCormack as Gander and Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

Dutch defeats the other Killjoy very cleverly, although not before John is in cryosleep. Pree arrives, having persuaded his ex and the Farren to come into the war on Dutch’s side (and also to spare his life). Only Pree could pull this off. “A kiss for an army,” Dutch mutters as Pree and Lachlan lock lips yet again. That was a kiss for the ages.

Also during the episode, D’av and Pree’s current boyfriend, Gared, find footage on the bar’s security cams proving Delle Seyah wasn’t dead when John left her in the alley, but Banyon, new head of the local RAC, doesn’t accept that as proof. She does insult Turin’s gorgeous hair at one point.

D’av and Zephyr work together more smoothly than ever before to find a way for D’av to “go to” Delle Seyah via the green goo. Those scenes were fun, and I like the tone that these two have achieved now. He’s treating Zeph more like a kid sister, and she’s showing an increased degree of confidence and self-respect. I’m glad we’ve moved beyond clunky and totally nerdy Zeph to this smoother, funnier version. She still has a lot to learn about being on a team, though.

Ted Atherton as Gander in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

D’av is there on Aneela’s ship in astral projection form to watch Delle and Aneela’s deputy Gander exchange more snark. Gander informs her she’s so young (and he doesn’t say foolish, but I swear he wanted to). He got Aneela to cancel Delle’s warrant on John and warns her that Aneela tires of her “toys” and breaks them. Yes, I can definitely see that in her personality. Delle Seyah does seem a bit perturbed by the warning. (Is it that no one could possibly get tired of her? Or is she used to being the one who tires first and breaks the toys? Probably both, I’m guessing.) After all, Aneela was just calling her “bunny” a few scenes ago! So Delle runs off to whine to Aneela about the warrant, D’av trailing behind, but Aneela, being a super powerful Hullen, can see his ghostly form. “Tell her (Dutch) I’ll see her soon,” she says to D’av, right before sending him back to his own body.

Kelly McCormack as Zeph in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

D’av debriefs Dutch and Johnny on the size of Aneela’s fleet, while in the secret lab, Zeph figures out how to open the Artifact from last episode. Yay! But wait — she gets a very secretive grin and closes it up again. Uh oh. Not a team player move.

Undaunted by D’av’s report, Dutch declares they’re going to “take back the RAC” as the first step. Exciting times ahead.

Random thought: When Aneela is teaching Delle Seyah how to work the green goo to access the vast ancestral memories of the Hullen, Delle compares it to a “living biocomputer.” My ears perked up — paging Zephyr, the resident biology nerd! I predict she and the large pot of green goo will come together at some point. Want to bet?

Aaron Ashmore as John and Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

One of my favorite exchanges in the episode was when Pree first mentions the Farren and John is in awe, while Dutch has never heard of them. John can’t believe she doesn’t know about them and she says it’s because she grew up “a slave princess in a harem” and you “grew up reading comic books and building robot dogs.”

All in all, a super-satisfactory outing in the Quad and I can’t wait for more. (Still wishing for more Alvis and Fancy, though, not to mention at least a glimpse of Bellus.)

Amazon bestseller Veronica Scott is a seven-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award and has written a number of science-fiction and fantasy romances. Her latest release is Danger in the Stars. You can find out more about her and her books at veronicascott.wordpress.com.

MORE ON HEA: See more of Veronica’s Killjoys and sci-fi romance posts

This week’s episode, Attack the Rack, was another interesting exercise in parallel events — more on that later — and the first real offensive in Dutch’s war against the Hullen. Warning: SPOILERS ahead.

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

Some episodes feel like a necessary bridge to more significant events down the line. This one affected me that way. Apparently, there’s been a lot happening behind the scenes in the Quad, as Dutch, D’av, Johnny and Turin get organized to take their own RAC back, while using the experience as a demonstration to show three other powerful RAC captains not only the problem but also the solution. There are teams, there are weapons … people and a Hullen have been kidnapped … John has devised a paralytic agent to immobilize everyone on the RAC ship while they undergo a literal life-and-death test of their humanity (or alien-ness) … Aneela has diverted a squadron of her ships to the Quad to bring Delle Seyah a “package.” Of course, all this activity converges and probably plants the seeds for major developments in the remainder of the season.

Things do not go Dutch’s way. In fact, events go painfully sideways.

There’s a mole, and all her plans have apparently been revealed.

Some parallel events, woven through the episode:

We have John and D’av tortured by a smug Hullen officer, who talks too much. If this is him as an allegedly emotionless Hullen, he must have been a real piece of work as a human.

Aaron Ashmore as John and Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

We have a Hullen prisoner tortured by Turin and Fancy. She tries to simultaneously persuade Fancy to reclaim his Hullen-ness and convince Turin and the listening captains that a former Hullen like Fancy will never really be free, or trustworthy. “You’re only in remission,” she says. Not cleansed.

We have Gander and Delle squaring off yet again.

We have Dutch vs. Banyon and a very sad outcome there.

We have Aneela vs. Dutch, still at a distance and via proxy.

And we have the diverging paths of the two male “nerds,” now Killjoy rookies. When Dutch promised a frightened Benji that she’d get him in and get him out of the coming battle, I knew he was doomed, based on every war movie ever. But then I thought, this is Dutch, so maybe he has a chance. Nope. He dies a protracted death at the hands of the Hullen before he can be saved. And the other male nerd, McAvoy, turns out to be the traitor, lured by the promise of becoming an instant Level Six. Never trust a Hullen. Sorry, “not Hullen material,” says the bad guy blithely as he kills McAvoy to prove a point to John and D’av.

Fancy stayed true to his own nature, eventually defeating the Hullen prisoner, Kitanne, despite a wavering Turin leaving him alone in the cell with her. Fancy uses his nifty tech to gain the upper hand and knock out the Hullen. I like that we see Fancy returned to his roots as we were introduced to him in season one. We’re not seeing a completely new side of the man, as we did with Pree last week (sexy blond badass warlords, anyone?), but a reassuring resurgence of the stand-alone, tech-savvy, deadly Fancy. “I am whole,” he says and proves it.

Luc Trottier as Benji in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

Later, back at the Royale after all the action, Fancy’s alone at his usual table and Turin tries to apologize, but Fancy’s having none of it. They have an interesting throwdown over who’s the a**hole, which goes back to dialogue between Fancy and John in season one, episode six, One Blood, where Fancy explains every organization needs one designated a**hole and that was “his gift to the Killjoy collective … may not always be liked but he will always be necessary because he does what’s needed.” Now he tells Turin the “a**hole corner only has room for one.” And leaves Turin in possession of the table as he stalks from the bar. So what does that mean in terms of Fancy’s next moves? Did the way he was doubted and treated by Turin and the other RAC captains mean he’s no longer on their side? Much more to come on this, I have no doubt.

Dutch misjudges Banyon, assuming she’s a Hullen, and mortally wounds her. Turns out Banyon is as human as Turin and just as motivated to root out the Level Sixes and get the RAC back to what it was supposed to be. Thanks to actress Karen LeBlanc’s portrayal in this episode, I grew very fond of Banyon, admired her, rooted for her and mourned her, all in a very brief space of time. She leaves Dutch carrying a burden of guilt and the charge to “be stronger and be smarter.”

Aaron Ashmore as John in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

The whole “let’s torture John and steal tiny increments of his memories while forcing D’av to watch” scene was well done and turns out to be primarily intended to reveal which brother can influence the green goo with his mind, because that’s the Jaqobis that Aneela wants brought back to her. D’av of course eventually does the fatal eyeball-popping thing on the Hullen who’s running the torture device. The surviving Hullen promptly cart D’av off.

Luckily, Dutch rescues John.

While in the armory, Dutch discovered the genetic bomb device that Delle Seyah used in season one to kill off many of her Qreshi enemies by targeting their DNA. It’s in a dusty box hidden in a cabinet, and she assumes Turin stuck it there. I can’t make that idea work for me — how could Turin have retrieved a thing like that from Delle Seyah? Not happening. I figure Khylen must have taken it back from her and hid it on the RAC ship, although where and how it was hidden lacks Khylen’s signature finesse. Perhaps there’s more to come on this point.

At any rate, despite temporary brain scrambling that leaves Johnny without memories of breakfast or his first time with a woman and makes the word “banana” a no-go for him (hopefully that’s not his safe word), he retains enough Johnny smarts to make the genetic bomb work. Dutch wipes out all the Hullen on the RAC station with it in one fell swoop, and they’re able to rescue D’av, who helpfully fills his brother in on that all-important first encounter as a youth. Seems like a victory for our side — yay!

But wait …

Ted Atherton as Gander and Hannah John-Kamen as Aneela in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

Back up a little. Delle and Gander continue their palace intrigues, snark matches and sniping, only to find out they’re both wrong when it comes to their place with Aneela. There’s not really any “Mom likes me best” situation when it comes to the Hullen queen. In fact, she’s been letting them tussle like mildly amusing puppies while she does lofty strategy and works to avenge herself on Dutch. Aneela destroys the other three RAC ships to show Dutch how outmatched she really is. “True power is direct.”

Delle overreaches a bit, calling herself Aneela’s friend and being sharply rebuked, but recovers fast and offers to be her champion and secret keeper instead, which Aneela finds acceptable and sexy, sealing the deal with a passionate kiss. “Crowns make for lonely queens and s***ty companions,” Delle says persuasively at one point.

(Is everyone going to share a passionate kiss this season BUT Dutch and D’av? Inquiring romance author minds want to know.)

Mayko Nguyen as Delle Seyah Kendry and Hannah John-Kamen as Aneela in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

I still believe Delle thinks she can outsmart Aneela somehow and has hopes of ending up on top of the Hullen heap herself. I think she underestimates Gander. I think he’s right that she’s still too tied into her human intrigues and vendettas and that may be her undoing. Why does Aneela like having her subordinates squabble and scheme? Does she have devious deep plans for them? So Shakespearean all the way around!

Random notes:

“My ears need a shower,” says Dutch after the opening scene. Yup, so did mine.

“Sweep, search, skewer.” D’av’s summary of the rules of engagement against Hullen.

“Don’t cry for the monsters you kill,” was Dutch’s admonition to her troops.

“I’ve been blowing my brain cells for years on booze, boobs and back issues of Captain Apex and I’m still the smartest guy in the Quad,” says John. Of course, nerd Zephyr, who wasn’t in this episode, is no guy …

Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin, Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch and Erik Knudsen as McAvoy in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

Aneela has a Darth Vader-ish moment when rebuking Gander and demonstrates massive personal power blowing up the RAC ships from afar to create pretty fireworks (another Killjoys recurring theme). Will Dutch make herself a Level Six queen with green goo at some point and these two go at it on equal ground?

Nice to see Pree briefly behind the Royale’s bar. I’m still waiting for Alvis and Bellus to show up.

Five episodes to go, so many questions and possibilities. Is it Friday again yet?

Amazon bestseller Veronica Scott is a seven-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award and has written a number of science-fiction and fantasy romances. Her latest release is Danger in the Stars. You can find out more about her and her books at veronicascott.wordpress.com.

MORE ON HEA: See more of Veronica’s Killjoys and sci-fi romance posts

Necropolis Now was a good solid episode, lots happening around the themes of love and loss, memories and revenge. Warning: SPOILERS ahead!

Aaron Ashmore as John, Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch and Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin in Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

I got my hoped-for kiss between Dutch and D’av early in the episode, but of course, in true Killjoys fashion, the quick smooch didn’t produce the desired result, nor did it make anything between them run more smoothly. Developments to come, hopefully.

The episode begins on a note of tremendous solemnity, with the preparations for the funeral for five admirals who died in the Hullen attack on the RAC. I have to say I appreciated this, since in most series, if someone dies, there’s little or no acknowledgment. The show just moves on. And these admirals weren’t even characters we knew. But as D’av says, “Everything important deserves a ritual.” Dutch is feeling guilty about the deaths in her war so far, especially Banyon, and worrying whether the sacrifices are worth the cost. She’s on her way to getting drunk, which D’av talks her out of, so then she says, “Tough love needs to have actual love in it” and tries kissing him. To his shock.

The entire rest of the episode he wants to talk to her about it, and not only is she reluctant to do so, they keep getting interrupted, usually by Zeph. I think D’av gets a lot of credit for patience and maturity in this episode — he’s come a long way from the man we met in the first season.

Patrick Garrow as Turin, Aaron Ashmore as John, Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin and Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch in Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

But now the team has arrived at the Scarback Necropolis complex for the actual ceremony, and Turin, Dutch, D’av and Johnny are the honor guard greeting the self-styled Guardians of the Quad, the nine leaders from Qresh. Turin has to explain the facts of life to Dutch and the brothers that, like it or not, they need the Nine, to serve as patrons for the army they’re trying to build and to provide funding. He exits the elevator before it ascends to the actual ceremony in the necropolis high above the main station, leaving Dutch to perform the eulogy in his place.

She uncharacteristically freezes up when the moment arrives, and D’av steps in smoothly, calling on his military background to say the appropriate words. I thought the ceremony was handled with beautiful solemnity, and I could see what an effective officer D’av probably was before the Company started messing with his mind.

I was really happy to see Alvis there as the officiant for the Scarbacks. I’ve thoroughly enjoy his character, and I’ve missed him this season. He has comforting words about how “only when a seed dies does it bear fruit.”

And then it’s back to politicking for everyone. Dutch argues with the pompous, unctuous leader of the Nine, who fends her off by reminding her “it was a rough year on Westerley … the Nine aren’t getting involved … and the Hullen aren’t our problem.”

One of the Nine corners Alvis about something, while off to the side Johnny tries to reconnect with his late wife Pawter’s younger sister, Louella, who’s inexplicably cold and standoffish to him. She flees the elevator as it prepares to descend back to the main station, and he rushes after her.

This elevator is so retro, complete with 1960s-sounding Muzak and copper wiring, it’s no wonder the creaky mechanism seizes up and the Nine are stuck between the Necropolis and the station. Suddenly, people start dying mysteriously, with lots of gushing blood and hard-to-explain wounds, even though each person is in full view of everyone else on this elevator of doom.

After a search of the occupants, Alvis is revealed to be the only one with a serious weapon — his scarification knife — so Dutch takes him aside. She reassures him rather hotly that “I could never accuse you of murder because you’re an attention whore activist who would scream it from the rooftops before I had a chance.” He has to admit, with chagrin, that that’s true, but he does appreciate her still looking out for him.

Turns out the now deceased member of the Nine had asked Alvis for a “tolerance,” which he explains is like asking for leniency from a judge prior to punishment. Unfortunately, the woman died before she could reveal what the Nine are planning, but it’s clearly going to be something bad for the Quad. She’d wanted forgiveness for all of the Nine.

High above, alone in the necropolis, John and Louella are trying to fix the elevator with Lucy’s long-distance help, which leads to some classic dialogue between the ship and John, and eventually they finish each other’s sentences, much to Lucy’s delight, despite the heightening crisis. It’s the simple things in life, right?

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch in Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

Meanwhile, Zephyr’s talking Dutch through an autopsy by long-distance communications link, but the results are hardly what anyone expects. Turns out there was a robotic inset gestating inside the corpse, which escapes and flies free around the elevator, buzzing ominously until D’av “kills” it under his heavy space boot. Lucy identifies the bug by searching the patents database — Pawter’s late scientist mother invented it. Surprise! They quickly realize the ritual seeds Alvis gave everyone to eat at the funeral as part of the ceremony were the delivery mechanism, so it’s a safe assumption they’re all similarly infected.

Louella confesses to John that she infected the group with the bugs (“Way to upgrade,” says John, who always finds a moment to admire superior technological skills). She wants revenge on everyone for the deaths of her parents and her sister and the loss of her biological arm in season two. It’s a plot with a degree of cleverness — she was the one who marooned the elevator in space via other tech in her cyberarm. Note to self: Louella is a very high-end, expensive hackmod!

John forces her to watch as the literal bug in his gut attacks his stomach lining, and they argue the semantics of whether she’s a murderer or an executioner. Personally, I didn’t find much difference and neither did John, but Louella is scarily off her rocker and happy to have people die as long as she doesn’t have to see the results of her grisly handiwork. John warns her from his own experience that the “satisfaction of revenge wears off.” Their whole conversation was very telling, I thought, as John has to work through some of his own actions and choices, compared to what Louella feels. In the end, it comes down to the fact that John declares he “loved your sister and she loved me.”

Convinced, Louella turns off the robot bug eating a hole inside John, saving him. I really enjoyed the thread of true love between John and Pawter in season two, and I appreciate the lingering effects of Pawter’s loss on him. Makes John a much more full-fledged person on the screen. He’s still the Johnny who reads comic books and will quip about anything anytime, but as played by Aaron Ashmore, he has a new depth.

The elevator has descended in a risky maneuver designed by John and Lucy in their spare moments in between verbal throwdowns with Louella, so the remaining people inside are safely out of range of the controller inside her bracelet. Bugs inactivated.

On the Aneela-Delle Seyah-Gander front, the ladies have had what was evidently a very fun and satisfying “unplanned sleepover,” but now Aneela has to rush off to test D’avin’s blood against her Hullen green goo samples as part of rethinking the Red 17 experiment. Delle stays behind in bed, luxuriating in how satisfied she feels and that it’s “good to be queen.” She gets a nanosecond or so to enjoy herself and then Gander’s thugs are rudely kidnapping her.

Patrick Garrow as Turin and Aaron Ashmore as John in Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

“Do you still think Aneela is in control?” Gander says with just the right amount of sneer and snark.

Delle realizes with wide-eyed horror that the ship doesn’t belong to Aneela — it’s a prison for her. That was a great moment, and I loved that my assumptions about Aneela’s place with the Hullen just got turned around 180 degrees. Duh! I didn’t see that coming.

Turns out Aneela’s main charm for the Hullen is how unusually good she is at using the green goo. “We watch her, we learn from her. The Hullen have existed for thousands of years and crossed species,” says Gander. “Did you really think the power structure ended with Aneela?”

Gulp. Actually, Delle did and so did I, but as soon as he says that, she realizes the error of her ways. She’s dragged off for a ‘treatment,” which I’m guessing has nothing to do with beauty, amid mutterings from Gander about possibly not even needing Aneela anymore and that Delle might be the future. Or not. He really doesn’t care.

I think he’s still underestimating her. And who is the true boss of Gander? Something or someone we have yet to see (cue the scary music).

Meanwhile, Aneela wanders an eerily empty ship, screaming, “I command you all to come back,” but no one does. She collapses onto the empty bed where no Delle awaits, murmuring, “Not again.” Then the green pool calls to her, and she immerses herself, going deep into a memory where Khylen waits for her on a beach and they have a sweet reunion. She’s disturbed by an occasional voice breaking in from the real world — Delle’s, the servant girl’s — but just as she’s about to tell “Daddy” about her new scientific breakthrough, he unwittingly betrays the fact he’s not really Khylen. Gander’s boss perhaps?

By now the servant girl is physically yanking Aneela from the pool. Why am I suspicious of this oh-so-helpful Hullen woman? An ex-lover maybe? Seems a bit odd to me that she’d defy Gander, but at least Aneela spares her when she goes all Darth Vader-ish on the rest of the Hullen. She prowls the ship, yelling, “Where is she?” as she searches for Delle and kills Hullen left and right.

Hold that thought for another episode.

Back at the Royale, Dutch is laying down the law to the leader of the Nine. He was visibly and amusingly uncomfortable being in the everyday surroundings of a working man’s bar on Westerley. But Dutch has figured out the Nine were planning to sneak off to a remote corner of the J and “abandon the Quad with a clear conscience,” with the granting of a “tolerance” for their sins from the Scarbacks. Not going to happen on Dutch’s watch, so I guess the Nine will be funding a very expensive war now.

Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin, Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch and Aaron Ashmore as John in Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

Dutch and D’av miss their chance to sort out that kiss because Zeph takes Dutch away to explore Aneela’s memories in the now-open Remnant box left by Khylen. “These cells have memories that Khylen was hiding.” Who could resist that challenge? (Well, me, actually — I’d have hung around with D’avin, but I think Dutch was relieved to have a reason to stand him up.)

Inside the bar, John tells Alvis he’s not mad at Louella because he understands about vengeance. Speaking of his wife’s killer, he says, “I still want to punish Delle Seyah, but the only true vengeance would be for her to feel my pain, but she will never love or be loved by anyone enough for that to happen.”

And we see a hugely pregnant Delle Seyah in the Hullen ship, unconscious in the middle of a lot of complicated technology, and Aneela sitting on the floor elsewhere amidst dead Hullen.

Quite the ending! I’m glad we have four more episodes to sort all this out, although I can’t imagine Dutch can conduct and win a war and settle All the Things in just four episodes, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a fourth season.

Amazon bestseller Veronica Scott is a seven-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award and has written a number of science-fiction and fantasy romances. Her latest release is Two Against the Stars. You can find out more about her and her books at veronicascott.wordpress.com.

MORE ON HEA: See more of Veronica’s Killjoys and sci-fi romance posts

As I was watching The Wolf You Feed, I kept thinking with glee that here were many of the answers I’d been craving since the early days of season one, but if I’d gotten these answers then, the information wouldn’t have been as impactful. I realized many insights from this episode wouldn’t have made much sense if revealed earlier (no hint of Hullen in season one). SPOILERS for this episode ahead!

Aaron Ashmore as John and Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin in Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

Dutch and Johnny reverted to who they were in season one to varying degrees …

D’avin continued to be the older, wiser, more mature version of himself and stepped up. He might not have wanted to be a general, but he sure is now.

So the first test flight of the captured Hullen fighters didn’t go well, and two young pilots died in the experiment. Turin blames everyone but himself as he rants. D’av is the voice of calm, but the other leaders of the various factions rightly want to know where Dutch is, since she’s supposed to be in charge of this war. D’av tells Johnny in no uncertain terms to find her and use his “best-friends power.” But Lucy — and I was truly shocked — is blocking John from locating them.

Dutch and Zeph have gone to an abandoned Company lab to try out the memory cells Khylen left in the Artifact. “You have done this before?” Dutch asks.

“I’ve read about it. Twice,” says Zeph as she prepares some very ouchy-looking technology to insert the cells into Dutch’s brain. “It’ll be like watching someone else’s dream.” Which sounds nice and cozy and all, but when the dreamer is Aneela, things go bad fast. First, though, we have a few bittersweet memories from a trip to the beach with Dad Khylen. Turns out they were one of the Qreshi 10 ruling families, but by deciding to go to Arkyn and try to make it livable, they gave up their place. No more 10 families, down to the nine we know and despise. And Aneela’s mother refused to go along. This memory took place before the Hullen arrived. (Young Aneela/Dutch is cute.)

Sweet, indeed, but too far back in time for the impatient Dutch. I would’ve liked more of it myself, but she goes back into the memories under Zeph’s nervous supervision and now we’re in that horrific lab on Arkyn where an adult Aneela killed a lot of people trying to make the green goo process work better. Ignoring the carnage, Khylen tells her the story of the two wolves in the heart. One is “anger, envy, self-pity and everything bad,” while the other wolf is “everything good.” Usually when this story is told, the person hearing it is asked which wolf they want to feed. Khylen tells Aneela the old lives are gone but “our future — (presumably as Hullen) — is endless.”

He was somewhat opaque to me during the assorted flashbacks. Obviously, he was Hullen and on their side, but yet he took action to protect Aneela at all ages and stages, although his methods seemed almost cruel. And he stepped in to help Dutch (Yala) as a child in the harem — more on that later. I guess the two wolves in his heart also fought constant battles with the influence of the green.

Patrick Garrow as Turin in Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

Back to D’av and a confrontation with Turin, plus a small standoff with the Ferrin mercenary commander. Everyone still wants to know where Dutch is. But Turin’s other issue upon being informed that the Hullen ships fly like “birds in migration” or “bees in a hive” is that D’av needs to go find Fancy, since he’s a Cleansed Killjoy.

Johnny’s only sage advice to his brother at this point, considering Dutch is still missing, consists of: “You have to be charming … we’re probably all going to die.” Hey, D’av can be charming. Sometimes.

D’av finds Fancy working out, which provides a good opportunity for actor Sean Baek to show off his combat skills before he and D’av chat. Fancy delivers the bad news that no one can fly the captured ships unless their brain has been “Hullen wired.” Failing to see a problem, D’av expects the Cleansed Killjoys to step up and become the needed pilots, but Fancy enlightens him to the fact the “cleansed have taken a lot of s*** from the Killjoys lately.” And further, “Most of us are just trying to figure out what it means to be human again. Not everyone wants to fight.” He wants D’av’s pledge to “have our back.” D’av makes the commitment. All through the episode, he was giving his word, staking his personal honor, putting himself out there as the person to trust. I think at this point he still believes he’s just holding the alliance together for Dutch until she returns, but actually we’re watching him move into command of the resistance to the Hullen, bit by little bit. The evolution of his leadership was interesting.

Sean Baek as Fancy in Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

Johnny is busy being himself and trying to crack the code to unblock Lucy, or find a back door through the programming, so he can locate Dutch. Zeph has outwitted him at every turn, much to his chagrin. There’s an amusing dialogue between him and a mini-hologram Zeph, who chides him for failing. (Reminded me of the scene in Jurassic Park when the park manager fails to solve Nedry’s hacking of the mainframe.) “Good things do not come in small packages,” Johnny says as he shuts down her message. She’s left him a puzzle, however, which can be solved in about seven hours, and then he’ll be able to find them. She’s thinking as a team member and obeying Dutch’s orders, which represents significant progress for her. Zeph, although she’s still the stream-of-consciousness-spewing, socially inept brainiac, has come a long way by the time we see her in this episode. She seemed less abrasive to me, smoother and more willing to fit into the mold Johnny wants her to occupy — tech support for Dutch and D’av to safely do their hero-warrior thing.

He does solve her puzzle, in much less time than Zeph predicted.

In the Aneela memories, meanwhile, we see that Khylen has imprisoned her in one of the shiny cubes on Arkyn. Although he visits her as often as he can, she’s alone and lonely, which sheds light on her plaintive wails in the previous episode when the Hullen seemed to desert her inside their ship. She also appears more unhinged to me with every passing vignette. She wants the green. She craves the green. Khylen says no. Ah, but she figures out a rather gruesome way to drain green goo from her own head, catching it in the bathtub and hiding it from Khylen. She talks about a fairy tale where the imprisoned princess “saves her magic” year by year until she can escape.

Back to D’av at the Royale bar, trying to calm the restive Ferrin commander, who has some terrific lines. “Peace is a painting, war is a mirror,” and “The Ferrin need to know the real heart of whoever they follow, because that’s what shapes the war.” Deep. All this while the fur-clad mercenary is flirting with Pree’s bartender/boyfriend, who recommends playing with puppies. Where, by the way, was Pree in all this? He was conspicuously absent from the entire episode.

Dutch and Zeph continue to struggle with the memories and their effects on Dutch, who is horrified to see herself as a child with Aneela. “Your crazy archenemy was your babysitter?” Zeph suggests as Dutch wonders if Aneela is her mother. Impossible, Zeph reassures her, because the Hullen can’t breed, which is why they take over hosts.

(So what exactly was Delle Seyah pregnant with in the last episode?)

Turns out, Aneela figured out how to physically retrieve her younger self from the memory pool of the green. (This is my interpretation of what happened anyway.) As she says to Khylen later in the episode, at the harem where Yala/Dutch grows up under his watchful eye, “(She’s) the me I should have been if we never went to Arkyn.”

Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin and Sean Baek as Fancy in Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

Dutch skips around in her own memories now and relives her wedding night, the aftereffects of Khylen’s murder of her husband and her first encounter with Johnny. We got to see him as a much younger self, trying to steal Lucy, dancing and drinking. Lucy’s first word to him ever was “no,” by the way. She also addressed him as “thief,” which I enjoyed. Dutch and Johnny’s first meeting becomes quite a trippy scene as present-day John tries to reach Dutch in her memory-overload state, which he eventually does, but not until she shoots him. Not to worry, he’s fine, and the shock pulls Dutch back to her normal self.

A key clue we pick up during all of this is when Khylen tells Aneela, “The lady must never know what you’ve done.” And Aneela is insistent the green is “she,” so I think we’re getting an idea about who or what rules the Hullen.

Meanwhile, Turin has tricked D’av into getting all the Cleansed in one spot, where he can arrest them, to “study,” which D’av finds unacceptable, deeming the idea “war crime-y.” Fancy tells D’av he’s just lost the war. D’av convenes a meeting of all the leaders (where were the hackmods?) and reveals what Turin has done. The Ferrin commander justifiably asks, “Why would we fight for an army that turns on its own?” Alvis tells Turin he’s “not a soldier … you’re middle management.” D’av sums it up that the Cleansed are the victims here, and “if we turn on one another, we have nothing.” The leaders declare they’ll follow D’av, and Turin is arrested.

Later, D’av reassures Fancy as he worries about relapsing, citing his own experience with the chip the Company had put in his brain. “No soldier comes with a guarantee … all we can ask for is their loyalty.” Fancy and D’av make a mutual pledge.

Morgan Kelly as Alvis in Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

D’av then confronts Dutch, reminding her “people need a leader.” She’s fully back into lone-wolf mode now, however, determined to keep finding her own answers, and refuses to step up. “It’s your army, D’av. Take good care of it.”

A few random thoughts:

I loved Zeph’s decision to keep her scar because it makes her bada**.

Johnny’s line about Dutch deciding to “huff Aneela brains for breakfast” — eww, but true.

I think we’re well set up now for the final three episodes!

Amazon bestseller Veronica Scott is a seven-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award and has written a number of science-fiction and fantasy romances. Her latest release is Two Against the Stars. You can find out more about her and her books at veronicascott.wordpress.com.

MORE ON HEA: See more of Veronica’s Killjoys and sci-fi romance posts

Heist, Heist, Baby has elements of the straightforward Killjoys plots of season one intertwined with the deep, twisty Hullen themes the show has grown into. Personally, I found it a somewhat jarring mix, although I understood why Dutch was enjoying herself with the simple things one last time, from a new hairstyle and a mani-pedi, to some straightforward old-style “heisty goodness.” Warning: SPOILERS ahead for this episode!

Aaron Ashmore as John, Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch and Luke Macfarlane as D’Avin in Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

The dramatic opening sequence of Hullen ships destroying a RAC battleship turns out to be Johnny running his 127^th simulation, trying unsuccessfully to find a way to defeat the enemy. Fancy and the Cleansed have helped him build the model to ensure its reality, he explains to an impatient D’av, and the worst case “is the only case.” No way to win.

D’av can’t accept this. He refuses to tell the War Council, “I’ll be your general this evening, congratulations, you’ve all signed up for certain death.”

They have a moment of serious brotherly snark over Johnny’s perception that D’av took Dutch’s army for his own, only to admit his older brother’s right that Dutch’s “trip down Aneela Lane jacked her up” and she isn’t acting like herself. Moving on from that, D’av says they have to cheat in “Killjoys style” to win, which boils down to Johnny figuring out some nifty tech to overcome the Hullen biological advantages.

Johnny, Dutch and Zephyr go off to admire the shiny cube that Khylen built for Dutch as a refuge, unlike the one he built to serve as Aneela’s prison. One cube keeps Aneela out, and the other locks her in. Jump ahead to Johnny flashing a cool piece of tech in front of the blase D’av (“ooh, aah, you’re a genius,” he deadpans). Turns out the tech really is nifty and will disrupt the Hullen’s neural links, since it operates on a frequency only they can detect.

Minor problem? A “giant sonic agitator is needed,” and the only one in the Quad apparently belongs to some unpleasant Mole miners. “These are not the kind of people you buy things from or trade with or talk to or make direct eye contact with.” D’av’s happy with these challenges and relishes the idea of stealing the device.

Off they go to meet with Borna, the queen of the desert clans, to get information on the miners’ vulnerabilities. Turns out Jelco, the Killjoys’ old adversary from season two, has become her third husband and is apparently quite happy with his place in her tribe.

Taking the data they need from Borna and paying her off in strong drink, Dutch, D’av and Johnny make plans. D’av wants a big team of Killjoys to go in and bust up the place and seize what they need. Dutch reminds him the secret weapon has to stay a secret, so it’s better if they keep the team small and make it look like the object of the raid is actually the valuable crystals. She’s all cheery about doing one last team mission.

Johnny again does battle simulations, this time with his sandwich, two coffee mugs and a bunch of grapes, which Dutch keeps eating, to his dismay. I loved the contrast between this method of war gaming and his elaborate high-tech tools at the start of the episode.

The miners take a lot of precautions, including wiring the truck carrying all the valuable crystals with a nuclear bomb. This appeared to be the major challenge of the heist — to avoid detonating the bomb. Nothing like a ticking time bomb to amp up the tension!

Seemed odd to me that the miners hired new drivers each time they needed a convoy, vs. using their own trusted clan members (can none of them drive?), but hey, it made the plot work, so off we go to the Royale to kidnap one of the new drivers and steal his retinal scan and ID so D’av can successfully drive the truck.

Thom Allison as Pree on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Pree is in the house today, with amazing eye makeup and stunning sartorial style that no lesser being could carry off. He’s vastly amused by the awkward and unsuccessful efforts of first Dutch and then John to lure the uninterested driver into a private room alone. He’s not so happy when D’av finally stuns the guy in the middle of the bar. “What did I tell you about incapacitating my customers?” he fumes.

“Keep it in the back rooms and not those that tip,” Dutch says.

The driver didn’t look like the tipping kind to me anyway.

D’av infiltrates the miners’ convoy, although no one likes him. “You talk too much,” says the lead Mole miner shortly before handcuffing D’av to the steering wheel, which of course is going to cause the original hijacking plan to go awry.

The whole convoluted strategy plays out badly even before Jelco arrives to hijack the hijack.

“Always popping up to ruin the mood,” says Dutch of her old foe as she manages to steal the sonic truck but has to leave D’av behind.

The miners send Borna and her two remaining husbands to steal the sonic disruptor back for them, or Jelco and D’av will die. Dutch persuades Borna the men will be killed anyway, there’s a moment of girl power bonding, and a new team is formed. Borna admits Jelco is her “strategy husband.” She loves him for his brain, awwww.

Luke Macfarlane as D’avin on Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

Meanwhile, Jelco and D’av are locked up and having a conversation about relationships while the miners are busy executing all the poor clanspeople Jelco brought along on his misguided attempt to commit his own heist. Tell me again how he’s so great at strategy? I did enjoy his heartfelt explanation of why he truly loves Borna, because she’s “powerful, wily … (with) delicious curves” and he likes being at her side. Opposites do attract. Sometimes. He offers D’av a lot of advice about handling Dutch and tells him to “give her something no one else can, something she needs that no one else can (provide).”

Dutch and Borna rescue them, Jelco and Borna stroll off into the sunset hand in hand with lovey-dovey music playing and the episode goes on.

Later, Zeph and Dutch have a deep conversation in the lab about how Dutch’s DNA matches Aneela’s but spins in the opposite direction, which Zeph thinks isn’t possible. Aneela is Dutch’s “original source,” so when Aneela dies, so will Dutch. Zeph wants to run experiments and try to find loopholes in the Hullen biology, but Dutch is at peace with the situation and ready to move forward.

Kelly McCormack as Zeph in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

Back to war strategizing with the council. “This plan has an awful lot of moving parts,” says one participant, not in a good way.

“Are you fighting this war because it’s easy or because it’s important?” asks Dutch. She explains it doesn’t matter how many millions of Hullen there might be, because they’re really all just “one soldier, one voice, Aneela.” Like a spider with multiple legs, Dutch explains, just cut off the head and the war will be over.

End of discussion.

Moving to the Aneela plotline for a bit before I wrap up. She spends a lot of the episode storming around the Hullen ship, searching for Delle Seyah Kendry, accompanied by Brynn who has no compelling explanation for why she’s helping Aneela rather than her old boss Gander besides “I fear you more than I fear him.” Aneela dishes out a lot of unpleasant torture to Gander and recites all the other nasty things she’s already done to him, off camera fortunately. “Your voice is as dulcet as ever,” he taunts her at one point. Eventually, she has to give up on breaking him to get her answers and instead forces him to touch the green goo with her so she can search his memories and find the location where Kendry’s been stashed.

“I know where Kendry is,” Aneela says.

“And now the lady does, too.” Gander always has a fast answer.

“So be it.”

Hannah John-Kamen as Aneela on Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Syfy/Killjoys II Productions)

The lady takes over the ship while Aneela rushes to Kendry’s side. She finds herself in what Brynn calls the library, where Gander collected samples of all the green goo pools they ran across. His purpose was to test them on Aneela by having Brynn and the others change the content of the pool where she bathed and drank. Aneela again obtains more green from inside her own skull and injects that into the “core green” controlling the ship, which enables her to wrest control back from the lady. She’s briefly interrupted by a trio of Hullen assassins sent by the lady to stop her, but Kendry wakes up just in time to assist with a few well-placed blows.

Aneela sentences Gander and all the other free-will Hullen to be made into drones, except for Brynn, since she was so helpful. I’m pondering whether Brynn will be the lady’s way out of the green, where she’s apparently trapped and needs a suitable host. Aneela’s too trusting of this free-will Hullen, I believe. Everyone seems to play a deeper game in Hullenland.

“Do you trust me?” Aneela asks Kendry, who of course says yes.

Mayko Nguyen as Kendry in Killjoys. (Photo: Steve Wilkie, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

I thought we were seeing the character of Kendry become more and more Hullen in this episode. For sure her relatively low-key reaction to being pregnant with something as yet unknown wasn’t the way I’d be reacting. She seemed her calculating self as usual but with an overlay of inhuman calm. Kudos to actress Mayko Nguyen.

Turns out Aneela trusts Kendry because her father did. “Papa trusted you so I thought I might too. What’s the point of living forever if you have to do it alone?”

Speaking of living forever, back to Dutch, sitting on board Lucy drinking from a mug she made herself at some point, and humming.

Enter D’av, who observes, “Ever since you got back from your remnant acid trip, you’ve been in a good mood.” Eventually, he forces her to tell him the truth, reminding her he’s “the guy you don’t protect from ugly s***.” As opposed to Johnny.

Dutch explains that Aneela is her original source, which D’av immediately understands means she’ll die when Aneela does.

Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch in Killjoys. (Photo: Ian Watson, Killjoys III Productions/Syfy)

She tells him he has to think like a general, not like Johnny, who’d put her first, which places humanity last. “End Aneela, the war ends, too … you can’t save me without losing the war.”

D’av visibly struggles with this concept, but the episode ends on his agreement with her plan to act as a solo assassin, the way Khylen trained her, and kill Aneela.

“OK.” He says, closing his eyes in pain.

I’m hoping the tidbit about all the varied green goo Aneela’s been subjected to, vs.  the “pure” Aneela green goo where Dutch was formed, will give our heroine some protection at the final showdown.

We still have whatever rabbits Zeph can pull from her metaphorical hat.

And Dutch has no idea about the lady who rules the majority of the Hullen from inside the green. I wonder if that would be a season four plotline, assuming the series is (hopefully!) renewed?

Two episodes left! Many twists and turns, no doubt — I can’t wait for more answers.

Amazon bestseller Veronica Scott is a seven-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award and has written a number of science-fiction and fantasy romances. Her latest release is Two Against the Stars. You can find out more about her and her books at veronicascott.wordpress.com.

MORE ON HEA: See more of Veronica’s Killjoys and sci-fi romance posts