Past Lives/Past Lives (Redux)

Above:  Luc and Eric

A Screen Capture

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SEASON 1, EPISODE 8

MAIN CAST

Michael Paré as Dante Montana

Claudette Roche as Lucretia “Luc” Scott

Tanya Allen as Percy Montana

Murray Melvin as Caravaggio (the ship’s AI)

Stephen Marcus as Rudolpho DeLuna

SUPPORTING CAST

Marc Duret as Eric

Heidi von Palleske/Heather Belle-Matmor as Penny Montana

Natasha Marco as Dr. Gardiner

Kevin Ryan as Guard #1

BEHIND THE CAMERAS

Director = Patrick Malakian

Writer = Peter Campbell

Composer = Donald Quan

Length of the original episode = 0:47:23

Length of the Redux episode = 0:44:08

GENERAL COMMENTS ABOUT THE EPISODE

Above:  Percy

A Screen Capture

1. In Rudolpho’s opening transmission (omitted in the Redux version), he reveals that he has never married, that he did meet the woman he should have married, and that, years later, he saw her again, from a distance.
2. The Biodesign corporation is a front for the Orchard.  Biodesign uses its janitorial staff as guinea pigs for a foreign antibody that attacks the brain stem and causes death within two days.  The corporation has hired more than 4000 janitors.
3. Elsewhere in the episode, dialogue refers to the corporation as Biomicron.
4. One may reasonably wonder how many of these janitors actually cleaned anything.
5. Dr. Gardiner does not care about, as far as she knows, having caused the deaths of many test subjects.  She is, however, interested in that happens during the 48 hours following injection.
6. The new special effects (in the Redux version) for Saturn Outpost 359 resemble those for Ring Shepherd from Becoming Shiva (season 2).
7. Eric, Luc’s former husband, is the newest janitor at Biodesign.  He has that job for less than a day before Dr. Gardiner injects him.
8. Eric is a compulsive gambler.  This caused his dishonorable discharge from the military years ago.
9. Eric was deep in gambling debt until Biodesign bought his debt and injected him.
10. Dr. Gardiner explains that she is trying to further human evolution.
11. The warrant for Eric’s arrest indicates two counts of first-degree murder.  He insists he was just defending himself.
12. After Dr. Gardiner injects Eric, he grabs a gun, shoots his way out, and steals the Carpathia, a shuttle.  The Transutopian apprehends him while he is en route to the Hyperion Medical Outpost, the closest medical site, in search of the antidote Dr. Gardiner claimed did not exist.
13. Caravaggio develops an antidote, which the foreign antibody overpowers quickly.
14. Luc is not impulsive.
15. Luc projects the image of a hard, by-the-book, no-nonsense person, but she has a soft side.
16. Luc’s marriage becomes a topic of conversation, especially with Percy.
17. Luc divorced Eric more than five years ago.  She did not cease to love him, though.
18. Luc left the military a year and a half ago, after her mother died.  Luc wanted to be close to Darius, her father, at that time, but he was distant and busy dealing with the Divinity Cluster.
19. Luc saw an illusion of her mother in Frozen.
20. After Dante finds a spare part aboard the Carpathia, Percy restores the Transutopian‘s reactor to full power, but not in time to reach the Hyperion Medical Outpost.
21. Dante visits virtual reality Penny.
22. Penny, a scientist, had developed a way to record the essence of one’s soul.  He used that technique on her when she was dying, after the attack on Titan about a decade prior to this episode.  See Family Values.
23. In a scene present in the original episode yet deleted from the Redux version, members of the Orchard called Rudolpho and expressed their displeasure with him, for Eric was still not in their hands.
24. The Redux version of the episode includes the follow-up scene, in which Rudolpho calls Dante, who informs him of how ill Eric is. Rudolpho says that, unless Dante delivers Eric, nobody will receive any bounty.
25. Pacquette (seen in The Divinity Cluster), a member of the Orchard, serves on the Board of Directors of Biodesign.
26. Eric, with the help of Dante and Luc, takes the Carpathia into outer space.  The shuttle explodes.
27. In the original version of the episode, after Caravaggio announces the destruction of the Carpathia, the AI continues by saying, “Source of destruction unknown.”  Then Luc utters softly, “Unknown.  Unknown my ass.”  In the Redux version of the episode, however, “Source of destruction unknown” is absent.
28. Is Eric dead?  Or did he move to a different dimension, as Eccleston did in The Divinity Cluster?
29. Luc properly blames the Orchard for Eric’s death.
30. The new special effects in the Redux version are beautiful.  The story, not remastered, still holds up well.  Special effects can be nice, but a good story matters more.
31. Luc mourns Eric:  “People come into your life and make you happy, they cause you grief, and then they’re gone. All that’ s left are ripples where they once were–ripples, stretching out forever.”  This statement hit me hard this time, due to a recent death.
32. Percy has mostly cut her self off from other people emotionally.
33. Dante’s attitude toward Eric changes during the episode.  The captain initially has the “tell it to the judge” attitude.  At the end, he lets Eric go.

Next:  Order, with a cult leader, the Divinity Cluster, and a reference to The Man Who Sold the World.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

OCTOBER 25, 2019 COMMON ERA

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