Many Welps

Dr. Nolira Eck is finally able to open a communications channel and hear a distress hail to the Bifrost.

S1 E5

Released: July 22nd, 2019

Length: 31 minutes

If you’re keeping track you might be wondering where episodes 2-4 are. Truth be told, I ran out of time to get my thoughts together for those 3 episodes before this new one came out last week. Even this write up is a bit later than I would have liked it to be. They’re good you should listen to them. Norlira does some crazy stuff, we learn there’s another life form on the ship, and she names the AI Ali.

I still like how the world-building happens in bits and pieces throughout the episodes. This week we learned that humanity has spread far a wide throughout the galaxy via a lecture. Expansion to the point where the lecturer questions if we should be expanding even more

.Where episode 1-4 were fast-moving and action-packed, episode 5 gives us a bit of a breather with a more reflective tone. Even though it’s not as exciting, it’s an important mommnet. So far the dynamic between Norlira and the AI has been built around survival. Ali is calculating the best routes to take, the amount of time Norlira has to get things done, constantly reminding her that there is no one available to help her. In this episode and even a little bit in episode 4, Ali seems to be trying to understand Norlira more and questions why she does some of the things she does. Tanja Milojevic does a fantastic job with Ali. There are times when she seems almost human. Other times I’m reminded it’s only an advanced computer when it repeats words and phrases the exact same way.

—-Spoilers Ahead—-

At the end of the last episode, Norlira had reached the communications bay and was receiving a distress signal. We learn that this distress signal is coming from an escape pod of a seemingly different ship that also ran into something. The child, Po Yano, is the sole survivor.

Norlira desperately tries to contact Po but it seems the escape pod can only broadcast out. What resonated the most with me is this scene where Norlira is determined to let Po know that she’s not alone which is something that Ali can’t understand. There’s this great exchange between the two where Norlira keeps arguing she needs to try to help this girl and the AI keeps calculating the chances of saving Po at zero. And even when it’s revealed that this broadcast was just a recording, Ali doesn’t understand why Norlira is still upset.

Norlira has overcome incredible things given the circumstances. She’s gone outside the ship, she’s traversed areas of the ship with no life support, she’s crawled through maintenance shafts in the dark, and yet she can’t save this scared girl trapped and alone in space. To me, it seems Norlira is trying to come to terms with just how helpless she is in her situation. You can hear the defeat in her voice when she says “…She tried so hard and there was no one here for her, she was alone, she died out here alone. Just like I will.”