This Friday on 'TR 2070' ep 11 'Begotten Not Made' (2)

They are definitely having the characters interact in different ways. Farve and Olan seemed to spend a lot of time together this episode. It makes me wonder if they were trying new approaches to see if they could get an audience for the show.

So it appears that the whole first episode was about the miner’s contract and all that was just forgotten. I was very surprised the blond woman from the first part did not show up. I really thought she was going to be a ‘bad guy’. This really was a strange pairing of the first part and the second part. It seemed like a lot of story and characters just got left dangling. What happened to the kid and his sister? They were so important to Hume in the first part and he made a lot of promises to them.

To me everyone in this episode just seems tired or maybe defeated. I wonder if they knew by now that the show was not doing well in the ratings. Even Farve (I should say the actor playing Farve) has always had layering in his performance but he was just there. I don’t know maybe to make the two-parter they had to put in some long days/nights.

A random observation: Calley angrily said to Ehrenthal “are you playing little games with me” Then it seems Ehrenthal’s defense is “I wasn’t playing games I was simply buying him some time”. Wouldn’t that kind of be the definition of playing games with Calley! Wasting his time and having him chasing a dead end so he would stay out of Hume’s way?

Boy there is a lot of free-wheeling in that interrogation room. Are they rouge or is this in compliance with the laws of 2070.

So a 5 out of 10 for me. Sorry I keep bringing the average of the group down. We didn’t even get any great Farve lines in this two-parter.

I will not be able to respond to anything on this episode and also will not be commenting on the next two episodes. I will catch up with you on Astral Projections.

This episode seemed incomplete. The whole two-part story does. Most of the issues brought up in the first half were simply forgotten, and, instead, they focused on Latham's capture. So, they went after him (and not even that was part of today's story progression, since they started doing that last week), found him, a Rekall lawyer strong-armed the CPB in order to release Latham, he appears dead, then the writers used a smokescreen (He's a clone! Ta-da!), but as TR 2070 does with all its potentially great ideas, just gave us a little taste of it and then forgot about it. All that ended in that barge Farve mentioned in the other episode which, for some reason, they hadn't investigated yet. Then the usual final confrontation, the bad guy takes the fall, Farve muses about his origins, and that's it.

The show is suggesting some interesting directions, namely, the Alpha android technology origin, but almost nothing concrete is developed. They are just teasing us. Oh, well, Latham says it was probably a machine intelligence that was the main responsible for Farve's making. Basically, that was it, a crumb of information.

This episode tried my patience. It doesn't deserve anything above 4 pistols whose shot throws a man a few feet back even though there's no recoil.

By the way, this weekend I'm going to post a thread so we can take stock of the first half of this long season.

It looks like we may be having a shift around the midway mark of this show – going from the procedural to a continuing story of Farve trying to find out where he came from. We did continue the case of the union rep being shot (now murdered, after he died early in the show), but the resolution of that seemed secondary to the broader story of Rekall’s desire to find out where Ian and his Alpha technology came from.

In fact, the union rep murder was left semi-dangling it seemed. I was leaning toward madp’s guess last week that that blonde union lady was somehow involved. I thought it was a plot to take out opposition to Minacom’s new union agreement by brainwashing one of those protesting the agreement into shooting the union rep. The rep becomes a hero or martyr and the protestors look like killers, paving an easy path for the agreement to pass. But instead, it seems to be just an elaborate plot by Rekall to try to find out who created Farve so they can steal the technology. That’s if I understood it all correctly – maybe I didn’t.

First off, Doc Latham from last week is captured by our guys. But very quickly, his Rekall lawyer arrives. I love his excuse when they ask why Rekall is helping a doctor who never worked for them. Oh, he did some consulting for us a few years ago, and we’re very loyal to our former helpers. LOL. For once, Ehrental has to back down and release him on bail, although he insists the lawyer must bring him back for trial. But, he is killed practically at their doorstep. But wait, it turns out he’s a clone – fully grown just a few weeks ago with complete memories.

Fortunately, he managed to give Ian a hidden message and even some of his own memories that Farve can play back. Thus, they are able to locate his diary and find out that his daughter had been kidnapped by Rekall to force him to plant the new implant in Ray last week. Our team ends up pursuing Latham and his daughter to the barge where Farve was “born” (or one like it; I don’t remember for sure.) We find out he was one of many designers who helped to create Farve, but he doesn’t know the mastermind was. They suspect it may have been a “machine consciousness, yearning to be human.”

Latham, the real one, escapes to Mars with his daughter (I hope for his sake she’s the real one – and not a clone also.) And Farve learns more about his origins from his experiences – “as if I connected myself to a part I never met.” As with the first part, I’ll give it 7 shuttles that almost look like oversized bugs.

This episode was a bit of a clunker. Pretty boring until the last few minutes on the barge. Favre it seems may have been constructed by non human agency, but does that mean machine or Alien beings?
Aliens would look out of place here, so might we have an android revolution controlled by androids?
Dramatically this week was slow and turgid. Its clear this show would have needed a massive overhaul to get a second season,the scope is too restrictive.
3/10

Further thoughts,
With a show like this where cop/crime show meets futuristic speculation,it would help if the crimes utilized the Sci fi element in the way the crimes are committed. In other words crimes that require the Sci fi element to be perpetrated.
Smuggling, murder or drug trafficking in zero gravity for example. Favre is such a great character he could have really been thrown into some real high tech scenarios even using the fact that he doesn't breathe air to be thrust into dangerous situations.
Having said that it's a pity that the show didn't survive longer, it had promise.

This one seems more or less like a new episode building on the story of Latham rather than a continuation or part 2 of last weeks episode.

Basically the story of the miners union and Larry Becker has been scraped for part two.

Latham is basically captured and there's a standoff between Latham, the CPB and a lawyer from Recall. The Recall lawyer is particularly interested in Latham because of consulting work he did. There's a back and forth that seems like it's out of a Law and Order episode about bail and arrest and detention procedures. One of my pet peeves about this series is that it gets bogged down in minutia about police procedure or technical information about android cognitive capacity or some other esoteric future tech topic.

So Latham is basically released on bail by the Recall Lawyer but he's basically killed moments later. If things aren't confusing enough we learn that he was actually a clone.

He gives Favre a secret message before dying that leads them to a secret diary. This ends up taking them to the original (not clone) Latham's daughter who is being held captive as a form of blackmail. Essentially Latham's daughter was being held captive by Recall? not sure, but his daughter is being held so Latham would install that micro chip in Ray's brain. They free the daughter and Latham and the daughter escape to Mars. But before they escape they let Favre know that Latham was one of his designers but not the head designer.

So basically now this show overriding story is arc is to discover who created Farvre? Why is this information so important??? Is it compelling enough to carry an entire series??? What's the downside of Farve not knowing who created him?

It seems like they just had too much story for a single episode so they created this two part mess. It doesn't even feel like a two part episode.

I give this episode a 5 out of 10.