User Reviews

When Moya is approached by a damaged Peacekeeper marauder Crichton comes up with a plan; he and Aeryn will pretend to be serving Peacekeeper officers, D'Argo, Zhaan and Rygel will be confined to their cells and Chiana will pretend to be Crichton's property… this fools the team of Peacekeeper special forces although it doesn't help as much as hoped as their leader takes command of Moya claiming that his mission has priority over everything else. His mission is to deliver a crate to a top secret Peacekeeper base deep within the uncharted territories. Crichton and Aeryn don't have time to find a solution to that problem because Chiana and Rygel decide to have a look what is in the crate; when opened we see that it contains a strange creature; it isn't a danger though, the danger is the virus it contains. It isn't a normal virus though it is intelligent and can jump from host to host; luckily it can only possess one host at a time in its first stage but after that it will release thousands of spores. We see Chiana get infected but she detracts attention towards Rygel and by the time people learn of the deception the virus is in Crichton and Rygel in stasis. As the hunt goes on paranoia rises as nobody knows who is infected… the only good news is that it can't re-infect anybody.

This episode doesn't contain as many laughs as most; instead we have action and a sense of paranoia permeates the story as the crew don't know who can be trusted. While we never see the secret Peacekeeper base its presence in the uncharted territories raises interesting questions for future episodes. The idea of an enemy that possesses a ship's crew isn't original it works well and is helped by the fact that there is little trust between the Peacekeepers and Moya's crew to begin with. The conclusion of the story is well handled and for the time being keeps the location of Moya and her crew from the peacekeeper command… the exact details I won't spoil though! As one would expect from this series the acting was solid; Gigi Edgley was even more feline than usual as the possessed Chiana! Overall this was an exciting episode with plenty of tense moments; certainly not one to miss.

I love this episode. Everyone's distrust of each other leads to their downfall and I love that. Not a neat and tidy episode.

Everything going fine the ruse until Chiana and Rygel screw it up. Loved the commandos, Larraq was a very interesting character but I being favorite was actually Thorn. Constantly portraying Peacekeepers as ruthless thugs gets old but Larraq and Thorn seemed to be willing to work together to fix the problem...until the end there that is.

Overall, I love this. Guest characters that are interesting. Crichton masquerading as a Peacekeeper was great but the distrust among the crew caused the entire mess.

This deceptively-titled episode lacked a single insect. Instead we were treated to a not-so-subtle homage to The Thing, complete with its most iconic alien-detector scene reenacted almost shot-for-shot.

Rather than shapeshifting, this critter leaps from person to person. Despite being able to infect only a single person at a time and leaves its victims a little dazed but then permanently immune to re-infection, we are led to believe this creature poses a grave threat to all the galaxy. The supposed crack team of Peacekeepers who are ferrying the creature around in stasis are so breathtakingly incompetent that they are, of course, the only casualties of the menace.

The creature's effects on the crew are inconsistent. Sometimes it renders its host mute and dazed, other times it seems to turn them to violent rage, and in others (like the highly-disposable Peacekeepers) it seems to do nothing at all except badly attempt to blend in.

The episode nicely builds towards what is clearly its intended nucleus of its re-telling of The Thing's alien detection scene. There is enough tension that it feels much the same, and the scene is well-produced. Either the entire cast was instructed to re-watch the movie, or the Thing itself has possessed Ben Crowder. Either way, the episode spends a little too much time getting us to what we know is its intended climax, for example wasting time trying to get us to understand why the Peacekeepers are there in the first place and showing the crew "blending in" with them, but is otherwise a creepy and high-tension episode.

The crew encounters an elite Peacekeeper Special Operations unit who, unknown to them, have managed to capture an extremely dangerous intellant virus. Just to elaborate on how dangerous this virus is Zhaan remarks that her people once encountered such a virus and it led to the destruction of an entire Delvian exploration colony.

Luckily the Peacekeepers have the last host the virus infected locked away in a sealed container. But alas, the unit doesn't bother to stand guard over their precious cargo so we soon have Chiana and Rygel opening the container, "to snurch any valuables", thereby releasing the virus.

But wait, the episode manages to get even more ridiculous. Instead of simply quarantining those who may have been infected the whole crew runs around the ship like a bunch of headless chickens. In the process of which every single member of the Peacekeeper unit manages to kill themselves.

The end.