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| | == '''''UNANSWERED QUESTIONS''''' == | | == '''''UNANSWERED QUESTIONS''''' == |
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| − | #When was the installation built?
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| − | #It looks like it was from the war and the antennas suggest some sort of observation/communications post. What was it originally supposed to be and who operated it?
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| − | #The installation has war-era equipment. Was it abandoned? If so when? Was it taken over? If so, by whom?<br>
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| − | #In the previous episode, the first level has a long corridor going off into the distance so far the end cannot be seen but instead fades into darkness. Where does that corridor go?
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| − | #The staff at the facility are either security personnel in non-descript blue uniform shirts and trousers without names and insignias or they are kitted out in armor—again without markings—of a professional grade. Are they in-house security or are they contractors? Who are they and who do they work for?
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| − | #The rest of the staff seem to be scientists and doctors. Most if not all wear lab coats. Again, who do they work for? Are they contractors or in-house.
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| − | #And for everyone at the facility, what are they working toward?
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| − | #The Director is a former Academy student and a sociopath. What is she the director of? Experiments on Readers or something else?
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| − | #Director Kappa said that the Academy is no longer under Blue Sun. “We’re independent, now.” Is that ‘independent’ with a lower case ‘i’ or an upper case ‘I’?<br>
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| − | #Since the Academy is no longer under Blue Sun, does this mean the Academy escaped wholesale or were they let go?
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| − | #If the Academy escaped, is Blue Sun looking for them? If so, the installation is the perfect location to hide—remote, on a world deemed abandoned and hidden from prying eyes deep in a mountain. The rock of the mountain might offer cover from cursory scans. Would it shield the installation from deeper scans as well?
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| − | #If the Academy was let go by Blue Sun, what are the reasons? Were they political, financial, or something else?
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| − | #If the Academy is operating on its own, what is it doing? Borrowing? Political and Industrial espionage? Theft of mental property?
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| − | #If the Academy needs money, how does it earn it? By hiring out its services? If so, who’s buying?
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| − | #If the Academy is being funded, how and by whom? And what are the funding parties receiving in return? Has the Academy traded one master or tyrant for another? If so, how is that freedom?
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| − | #Of course, we only have Director Kappa’s word that the Academy is no longer under Blue Sun’s thumb. What if she was lying to Joshua? Why would she lie? Did she surmise that Joshua left Blue Sun because he was dissatisfied with them and the only way to bring him back into the fold was to make him believe the Academy was no longer a part of Blue Sun?
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| − | #Who was the man in the straitjacket who banged heads with the lab technician? Who was the lab technician and what was he doing to the man in the straitjacket?
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| − | #When Director Kappa took Joshua aside for her ‘interview’ she mentioned that the most talented of the Academy’s students were also the most unreliable. Agent Rho was cited as an example.
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| − | #Kappa also said she warned ‘them’ that Agent Rho wasn’t ‘ready’. Who were ‘they’ and what was Agent Rho not ‘ready’ for?
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| − | #Kappa admitted that she is not as … respected … on her opinion of Joshua’ abilities as others who were more optimistic. Again—who are these other people and why are they optimistic about Joshua’s abilities? What plans did they have for Joshua? Or for Agent Rho?
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| − | #Kappa said the people who have hired her (and by extension, the entire facility) have high hopes. High hopes for what?
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| − | #Kappa also said that she would have to call ‘her’ to come in and discuss what to do with Joshua. Who is ‘her’? And where is she ‘coming in’ from? How long would it take her to arrive? Is ‘she’ the person at the top of the command chain for this operation?
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| − | #Kappa has a man strapped to a device that can amplify his pain and mentally project it across an unspecified (but implied great) distance to a recipient as a shared torture. Was this the source of the incredible worry and anxiety that hit Joshua on our approach to the installation in the last episode?
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| − | #Who is the man’s pain and anguish being directed toward? Is it someone at the facility or elsewhere? If elsewhere, where?
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| − | #Why were some prisoners isolated—the little girl and the straitjacketed man—and others thrown together in small groups—our crew, the two women, the three men? Was there a rhyme or reason to the groupings or were the prisoners simply put in cells with the same party with whom they were captured.
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| − | #Of the two women, one was a Captain of an Alliance vessel. She was ‘escorted’ off her ship and brought here. She states she was interrogated for information for Independent activities in the area. This suggests that the Alliance is now hunting out suspected Independents amongst its own populace. Is this hunt restricted to the military ranks? Or does it include civilians as well? If it is restricted to the military, how widespread is this policy? Is it isolated to certain branches or departments or is it military wide? If it is isolated, is this a sign of a schism or a split in the ranks? If so, how high up does it go?
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| − | #If this is not a hunt or a purge instituted by the military brass but by the government, who is conducting it and why? How far does their power go?
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| − | #What ultimately happens to the people they capture and interrogate? Would Captain LaSalle be released or executed? If the former, would she be told to say nothing of what happened? If so, how would that injunction be enforced? Constant surveillance? Implanted devices tracking her movements? Mind wiping? Brain surgery? Or would she just be taken outside and shot?
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| − | #Of the three men in the other cell, Emmett is a journalist. If he was a prisoner for the same reasons as Captain LaSalle, then it would strongly suggest that civilians are falling under the hammer as well. How did he get captured? Captain LaSalle speaks of him as if she knows him and when Emmett was first approached by Nika, he called her Captain. Did he think she was Captain LaSalle?
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| − | #Emmett is a journalist. Spies without diplomatic cover traditionally adopted covers as journalists or businessmen for the mobility and the access to people the covers afforded them. As such, historically foreign businessmen and nearly all journalists were viewed with suspicion by oppressive governments. Therefore it’s not surprising a journalist to the Independents would be arrested and detained here. But is that what really happened to Emmett?
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| − | #Emmett asks Nika if she’s Alliance, then if she’s not-Alliance. ‘Not-Alliance’ covers a lot of ground—Independent but also New Kalmar and others. What would Emmett’s reaction have been had Nika definitively identified herself with any of the above? Would he have been as helpful if she declared herself Alliance—since he seemed allied with Captain LaSalle—or would he have refused to help.
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| − | #LaSalle mentioned that sometimes the prisoners were allowed to talk to each other. It could be Emmett was under a different Captain altogether. Under what conditions? When?
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| − | #Captain LaSalle mentioned the men had been at this facility longer than she had. How long? Can their length of stay mark the beginning of … whatever is going on? Or is it even significant to what’s going on?
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| − | #The other two men in the cell with Emmett—Ben and Sorren—are mechanics. While their exact specialties aren’t disclosed, Sorren explains he had designed/developed other facilities. Who did he work for then? What were those facilities designed to do? Is this why he was captured?
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| − | #Sorren mentioned his wife was being held hostage to his good behavior. When asked where she was being held, he answered that she was ‘working’ for them? In what fashion? And where? When we liberated the other prisoners from the lower level, his wife was not among them. Is she elsewhere in the facility? Or is she off planet somewhere?
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| − | #If Sorren’s wife is off planet, doesn’t that suggest that there is a network of such facilities—or at least, the staff to run the hostages—across the Verse? How long did it take to form such a network? Who is in charge of it?
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| − | #The crew used the facility’s HVAC vents to bypass the surveillance cameras and to move freely about. When they gained the reactor on the lowest level, it was simply a matter of removing the grill off the air vent and dropping down to the catwalk below. While the reactor access was isolated to the lowest level in the facility and the reactor controls was reached only by a narrow retractable bridge in an otherwise inaccessible pit, the fact that they were able to get there via a vent large enough to admit them suggests a severe lapse in security. Why not have the vent channel itself into increasingly smaller and more numerous vents the closer it got to the reactor chamber? Maybe the FPM or pressure drop couldn’t allow it? (See www.engineeringtoolbox.com HVAC Terms for more possibilities)
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| − | #When we release Malcolm Reynolds and his crew, Reynolds says one of their crewmates is working for the Academy. He also says she’s a mite leaky in the brain pan and Joshua asks him for her name. It’s River and Joshua knows her. How did River fall into the Academy’s clutches? Was she captured with Reynolds’s crew or was Reynolds trying to rescue her and he’d failed, getting captured himself? Or was she working with the Academy for other reasons and circumstances?
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| − | #Is there any correlation between River and Rho? Both start with R. Are they the same person?
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| − | #Reynolds’s XO is a woman named Zoe and the little girl, named Ning Jing, is her daughter. Where is the little girl’s father? Is he with the crew? If so, who is he? If not, where is he?
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| − | #Before we can take the elevator up to the second level, we’re found out by the Woman from IAV Aceso, the one we’ve pegged The Psychiatrist (for want of a better name). She utters an odd phrase in a language Joshua recognizes as Icelandic before he’s felled by the sensation of thousands of invisible biting spiders crawling over him. Is The Psychiatrist the ‘her’ that Director Kappa mentioned would be coming to decide Joshua’s fate?
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| − | #Accompanying The Psychiatrist is the mousy woman that Kiera recognizes as the Reader who attended her interview. Joshua recognizes her as his former Academy classmate River Tam. Is this Agent Rho? Is River Tam working with The Psychiatrist under duress, with her brother Simon Tam being tortured via Kappa’s device to keep her in line?
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| − | #Kappa hinted that an Operative of the Parliament was in ultimate charge of the facility and the program running out of it. Is The Psychiatrist the Operative?
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| − | #The trigger phrase works on River Tam as well as Joshua Drake. This suggests that the phrase was implanted when both were at the Academy and not afterward, when Joshua was with Blue Sun after graduation. What other trigger phrases do they share in common and is anyone on either crew keeping track of the damned things? Somebody should start a list. Seriously. They should.
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