This Friday on 'TR 2070' ep 7 'Rough Whimper of Insanity'

The episode starts out with a Delta service android being serviced by this technician. This technician gives him this silly little toy frog which gives off a weird sound. It seems innocuous at the time but it ends up creating a virus in the android that makes him act out aggressively. The android ends up beating the crap out of two office workers before he's subdued.

Hume and Farve are sent to investigate. A different service technician is a bit befuddled as to how or why the android erupted. The victims are quite angry insulting androids in general and Farve attempts to calm them down. The android somewhat shockingly catches on fire and Favre and Hume take it back to the lab for an investigation. Before they leave Hume squeaks the little frog at Farve.

Martin and Lieutenant Calley come in to investigate the corpse of the burned Delta along with Olan, Hume and Farve. Shockingly Farve starts displaying rude and aggressive behavior in general and then later at Martin and Lieutenant Calley. Ian starts worrying about his behavior and begins a diagnostic survey. As he starts the diagnostic he continues to display odd and aggressive behavior.

After reinvestigating and further discussions with Olan, David deduces that the virus came from the frog. Things become more complicated as Ian is an alpha class android and there's no comprehensive known knowledge of his inner workings, only his creator understands that and Ian is the only one who has access to his creator's origins. Farve decides to perform another diagnostic but would prefer to do so in a safer environment so he perform's the service at Hume's house. Farve discovers that the virus purpose is to send himself back to his original creator in that they are the only one who can fix his problem. Another purpose of the virus is to expose who the real creator is.

Farve and Hume then go to a few locations including an Asian restaurant so Farve can feel what eating is all about. Farve also starts to lose it more and more and sings in a karaoke bar. Farve gets more and more disoriented and starts falling apart and they decide to go back to the lab. Before they do they get ambushed by "The Technician". He's a bit of two bit Batman villain and it ends up that he made Favre come to this place so he could capture him. His main plan was to kidnap Favre and sell him to a corporation that wants to rip off his alpha technology.

Lieutenant Calley comes out of the shadows and kills the technician and it's discovered that he was using Farve all along as bait to catch the technician. There's a bit of tension between Hume and Calley during the episodes final 10 minutes.

They go back to the lab and Olan performs a cool looking reboot of Farve that almost breaks down the entire lab but Farve ends up being ok as his virus and the last 12 hours have been erased.

The episode takes an interesting turn as David brings up trust issues because Farve's creator still maintains contact with the android. In a show of trust Farve brings him to a barge by the sea and tells him, "That's where I was born".

*Lol, I guess all of Farve's Alpha A.I. could be stored on a 1999 CD Rom.

*One thing that seems a bit murky was whether Farve had agreed to be the "bait" in Calley's sting operation.

*The ending with Farve in the chair reminded me a bit of William Hurt in Altered State.

*One thing that doesn't make sense is that Farve is the newest model yet he's called "Alpha" and the older model is called "Delta". Wouldn't it make sense that they would start with an Alpha Model and then evolve into a Delta model?

Good episode overall, I give it an 8 out of 10.

I understand that in a story sometimes something has to be put in just to get the story moving. Sometimes it is a bit far-fetched but I am ok with that. However, when it is so off then it starts to bother me.
Point one being:
It appears that ‘The Technicians’ plan is to get Farve infected with a virus which in turn would make Farve have to find his maker. To do this ‘The Technicians’ had to make some giant assumptions.
That Farve would be put on the case
That somebody would find and keep the frog
That somebody would point the frog in the direction of Farve and squeeze said frog.
Point 2:
So instead of Calley just telling two detectives that he wants their help setting up a sting he comes up with a plan to just follow them everywhere they go so he can catch (kill) ‘The Technician’. Well it is lucky that neither Hume nor Farve are good at ditching a tail because both said tails were not ditched in their elaborated ‘walk about town’ maneuvers.

I am confused what division Hume and Farve work in. All things corporations but they have done cases that they would not know had anything to do with a corporation until later in the case. All things android but they have done non-android cases.


Why is no one afraid of Farve when he is having his breakdown in the lab? We now know they all have the knowledge that he is an android so why do they keep antagonizing him? I also notice he had his gun holster on when he was at Hume’s apartment. I could not tell if his gun was in it but I would hope not.

It would appear that Farve is not the only Alpha. Calley says multiple but not how many. Could they be placing them in strategic locations, police, military, corporations etc.?
(Calley saying “I got a tip The Technician was going to make a play for A alpha android”)

It is too bad Farve had to lose all his memories of his and David’s bonding with David sticking by him.

I see potential for greatness in some of these episodes. Farve’s “I did not bring you a hostess gift and his acting while he was looking at his ‘motherland’ (the ship) was fantastic but so much of each episode is much ado about nothing. What I think this show was lacking was a good editor.
For me this show’s strength is the Hume/Farve relationship (really mainly Farve) and if they had made this about the two of them trying to find Farve’s origin story with some police work as more of a back story I would have enjoyed it more.

Having enjoyed last week’s episode so much, I expected a big drop this week with less human/android interaction. But, instead this one was pretty good from start to finish, with some great moments – both human and android.

It starts with a Delta janitor android going berserk after being examined by a mysterious “technician” offering a cut-rate checkup. (So now we have Delta, Beta, and Alpha androids – it’s all Greek to…never mind, too obvious.) Actually, he acted like a pissed-off human when someone walked on his freshly waxed floor, then later self-destructed. Farve, from hearing a seemingly innocuous toy frog’s croak, begins to act the same way although with more self-control – most of the time, anyway. It’s interesting that in the pilot, Beta androids were trying to achieve human consciousness and become more human, but in this episode it seems like this glitch makes them act more human despite their own efforts.

Karl Pruner has a field day playing the “possessed” Farve doing everything from getting pissed off and then over-apologizing for it, singing Karaoke (really badly, too), and eating food while looking forward to the “pleasurable” experience of disposing of his waste. He also expresses fear of death, and a genuine respect and love (if you will) for his partner. But Micheal Easton has some terrific moments as well, standing up for his partner. “I’m no android-lover,” he says, “but he’s my partner and that makes a difference.” Later when Calley tries to remind Hume that Farve is just a machine, David replies that he’s not just a machine – he matters.

Speaking of Calley, we find out in this episode that he and Arenthal definitely know that Farve is an android. But later, he turns out to know even more. He actually let Farve get infected so that he could catch this mysterious “The Technician” who was trying to use the disorder to get Farve out in the open so he could bag him. Calley is there to try and catch “The Technician” but some mystery figure takes him out first. Calley has discs and knew that Farve could be rebooted, which was why he let the scenario play out as long as he did. Farve is “rebooted”, but the process destroys some equipment and takes a rough toll on Ian. This way, the writers let us know they can’t just use rebooting as a tool to fix him anytime something goes wrong; this looked more like a one-time-only deal.

Ian seems to be developing a history not unlike Data on ST:TNG. He has a mysterious creator that he doesn’t even know about. Farve does show Hume the barge on which he was “born” at the conclusion of the show, a touching moment of wanting to tell his partner something personal about his origins. And for the first time since the pilot, I think, all the major characters appeared in the episode. It was interesting that Ian gets to meet Olivia at their apartment, where David has taken him to allow him to self-analyze his problem in private. He comments that this wasn’t how he envisioned his first visit to their apartment. Since he lost that twelve hour period when he was rebooted, he won’t remember that. It would be fun if he had to visit the apartment without prior notice next week, and made the same comment to her again.

Anyway, a good episode with some surprises and some tech that didn’t look that dated. (The rebooting disc and device looks like my computer at home; that screen projected in the air during his self-evaluation looked current, although probably “outdated” for 2070). I’ll give it 9 bad renditions of “Fly Me to the Moon.”

Android behavior is always something interesting to explore in a show like this. And in this particular episode, we seem to be just scratching the surface, as there's much more to be explored. This time we had a few answers and many more questions. Hey, the writers gotta keep enough story lines for the show's future five seasons, right?

So, now we have the mystery of Farve's origin, although nobody is really baffled he exists, so an alpha android is impressive, but expected. There's also Calley and his shady reasons to conduct and off-the-books investigation ending with execution. Why did he want the technician dead? To silence him? Again we had another step toward Farve becoming more human: in some ways he's like a child evolving, and this time learned what it feels like to be sick... And then unlearned everything as the writers hit the reset button. I don't like it when character development is wasted.

I'm also not sure I like how the show handled the fact that people know or learned Farve is an android. In the begining it seems that's a secret, but now I think that everybody has known it all along, and only David was out of the loop, because nobody has shown any surprise Farve is an alpha. Oh, and even people outside the CPB know Farve is an alpha, other wise there wouldn't be so many people willing to pay a lot of money to the technician for him to bri8ng Farve to them.

We've learned a little more about the universe outside the city. So, there's a lake and a barge not far from the shore. It was really night this time, so I wonder if they had shown up during the day we'd have seen the first rays of sunshine in the show. Or is the world so polluted in 2070 that the sun never really shines? Anyway, I found it strange like Farve and Hume talked about the barge like it was another dimension, a place that had to be seen with imagination, not a boat anchored a few hundred meters from where they were, and a place taht could easily be reached with a small boat. Methinks we'll learn more about the barge in future episodes. Oh, and who was that mysterious figure in the very end?

Oh, by the way, it seems Olivia had the chance of getting some good suntanning sibnce last week, and she couldn't have got that in a Rekall trip to the Galapagos. But since, again, the sun never shines, I guess she used a suntanning booth.

As somebody else had pointed out, the technician made a big assumption that Hume and Farve would be assigned to the case of the Delta that went berserk. But then, the tehnician could just be spreading havoc throught the city and sooner or later he would have a chance to infect Farve.

Karl pruner is doing an excellent job as Farve. He's exptremely likeable. (I also like Olan very much.) Speaking of likability, I agree with the crazy androids: those two people in the beginning were morons, and it's extremely rude to step on a floor someone has just buffed. I would've reacted the same way. Oh, yes!

I just think that it would be a mistake of building androids so human-like if you have the option to be rude and offensive to them. I mean, you can curse and offend your car and you can be sure it won't mind. But if you offend something that looks and acts so much like a human worker, than there's something wrong with you and this kind of behavior shouldn't be encouraged. What will the children learn if they see adults behaving like that? Speaking of children, why haven't we seen any so far?

The episode was better than the previous ones, except the pilot. I think I should have graded the pilot better, with a 10, because now I think Farve's day of little madness deserves 9 disgusting meals that are good both to come in and to come out.

Certainly a better episode than last week. Pretty good in fact from the off. Janitor Jack's boss the only poor element, a phony British accent so bad it's untrue,trust me nobody speaks like that here in the UK.
Gawd bless me guvnor no we don't.
This was a real gritty piece of Sci fi ,Karl Pruner was sensational as Favre went slowly over the edge into insanity. It's not really a surprise that whoever built Favre is still keeping tabs on him (is Favre a him or an it) and I expect Hume to be visiting the mysterious barges sooner or later. The idea that Calley using or risking Favre to trap the technician I'm a bit uncomfortable with ,it seems a bit too risky for not much gain,yes they've got the technician out of the way bur at great risk to Favre ,unless of course Calley has secret instructions to test Favre capabilities to the limit,perhaps he and the creator are in cahoots.
As no-one in this group seems to have watched classic Sci fi from my side of the Atlantic,Dr Who Blakes7 , this next observation will pass people by, but the weird and wacky moments of Favre reminded me of Kryten from Red Dwarf .
8/10.