Joshua Doors’s empire is growing very quickly, and after investigation, Liam and Renee believe the cause is a piece of Taelon technology out of control.
Ah, the vagaries of US TV watching: the spoiler. Way before I saw this episode, I knew Jonathan Doors was going to be killed off. How would it happen? Would he go out with pride and honour, or would he just snuff it quietly where no-one would notice? Well, it’s pretty much option two.
Let’s see what we’ve got. Mind control, computer controlling everything. Sounds a bit like The X-Files’s Ghost in the Machine. Well, yes it does and this episode doesn’t make the idea seem any more great than it was then. There’s no-one who works at One Taelon Avenue who has even a hint of personality, including Joshua Doors, and Jonathan’s hardly been full of personality either. Where did his character go wrong? In the first season, he was a strong leader, at the start of the second he was tough on new arrival Liam and there was plenty of tension. Then he ran for President and it all went wrong. Since then, no-one’s been sure what to do with Doors, so killing him off is hardly a bad thing. In fact, it’s almost essential.
Which is part of the problem. I couldn’t have cared less what happened to Doors long ago, and his death is singularly unaffecting. His last scene with Joshua is full of clichés and he’s become such an expendable character that his presence isn’t going to be missed. My only hope is that Joshua comes to the fore and gains the personality he needs.
Further to all this are the Taelons, trying to stop their machine’s swathe of destruction. They can’t do it, so Sandoval nips in and blows it up with ease. His acquiring of a device that seems capable of shutting down Taelons is the only potentially important plot point in the story, but otherwise this story is weak and badly planned-out, serving more to write out Doors than to construct an exciting and interesting plot.
**
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