The Ark (Season 1)
Thursday, 2 March 2023 01:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queer_scribblingEpisode 4: We Weren't Supposed to Be Awake.
I must admit that I put off writing about this episode because I found a somewhat offhand comment so fucking annoying, so it's now a week after I saw it.
Basically, a lot of people start getting visual and auditory hallucinations. It turns out to be an unknown compound in the water from the comet that's somewhat close to LSD on a molecular level, which is supposed to be why most people are experiencing hallucinations. It's not structured in a way that the filtration systems built back on Earth caught it, or something.
The head of security does question Lieutenant Garnet about that video of her killing someone in a bar fight. It turns out that Garnet and Whatsherface were clones in a secret government experiment that involved genetic testing. The syringe of orange stuff put in the clone made her more aggressive, but the tardigrade-slash-blue stuff in Garnet's syringe just made her a bit better than the average human for space exploration (for example, she can withstand more solar radiation). It was actually the clone in the video, and Garnet had an alibi to prove that.
However, no one's supposed to know about government cloning experiments, so Felix [aka security guy] can't just say that to the other lieutenants during his investigation. It seems like unnecessary drama, and like, they could just say that Garnet has an identical twin back on Earth. Garnet is the only person on the ship who isn't hallucinating - because the tardigrade stuff has triggered a protein to breakdown the unfamiliar compound - so duplicating those proteins from her blood and using them in the water supply is the 'fix' for everyone else, which led to a sort of smug 'I helped you and you don't even know it' comment from her.
It's not that nothing else happens, but this is the major Issue Of The Week since too much of the argon-derived compound could lead to seizures, unconsciousness, and eventually death. Right, so, that offhand comment. Dr Kabir was given a line about "bringing anyone who seemed manic" to the med bay, and I just didn't have the patience to write about this initially. Like, words have meanings.
It is not a guarantee that someone in a manic state will show these symptoms, and even if a manic episode with psychotic symptoms is happening, it's not as simple as 'this manifestation of your mentor will give you the answer to your problem' or your subconscious will conveniently talk you to an answer somehow. That's very clearly a tactic for the show to feature other characters and figure how narrative things. If it were only people figuring things out, it'd probably be easier for me to ignore this lapse, but one character is presented as fist fighting someone who's not there. Another experiences one of his colleagues telling him that they should kill Lieutenant Garnet, and a third hallucinates someone telling her they committed the murder being investigated.
People who experience any degree of psychosis - as this is not something limited to mania - already experience a lot of assumptions that they will be dangerous and more prone to violence. This isn't to say that no one could ever be even a little dangerous while psychotic, but a work of fiction is not the same as an actual person talking about something. The writers are not required to use the Insane Equals Violent trope. They don't need to blur the lines of 'actually true or helpful' hallucination with 'questionably true' delusion - if the characters who experienced the "fear based hallucinations" around murder are shown to actually believe them or turn out to be correct.
I must admit that I put off writing about this episode because I found a somewhat offhand comment so fucking annoying, so it's now a week after I saw it.
Basically, a lot of people start getting visual and auditory hallucinations. It turns out to be an unknown compound in the water from the comet that's somewhat close to LSD on a molecular level, which is supposed to be why most people are experiencing hallucinations. It's not structured in a way that the filtration systems built back on Earth caught it, or something.
The head of security does question Lieutenant Garnet about that video of her killing someone in a bar fight. It turns out that Garnet and Whatsherface were clones in a secret government experiment that involved genetic testing. The syringe of orange stuff put in the clone made her more aggressive, but the tardigrade-slash-blue stuff in Garnet's syringe just made her a bit better than the average human for space exploration (for example, she can withstand more solar radiation). It was actually the clone in the video, and Garnet had an alibi to prove that.
However, no one's supposed to know about government cloning experiments, so Felix [aka security guy] can't just say that to the other lieutenants during his investigation. It seems like unnecessary drama, and like, they could just say that Garnet has an identical twin back on Earth. Garnet is the only person on the ship who isn't hallucinating - because the tardigrade stuff has triggered a protein to breakdown the unfamiliar compound - so duplicating those proteins from her blood and using them in the water supply is the 'fix' for everyone else, which led to a sort of smug 'I helped you and you don't even know it' comment from her.
It's not that nothing else happens, but this is the major Issue Of The Week since too much of the argon-derived compound could lead to seizures, unconsciousness, and eventually death. Right, so, that offhand comment. Dr Kabir was given a line about "bringing anyone who seemed manic" to the med bay, and I just didn't have the patience to write about this initially. Like, words have meanings.
It is not a guarantee that someone in a manic state will show these symptoms, and even if a manic episode with psychotic symptoms is happening, it's not as simple as 'this manifestation of your mentor will give you the answer to your problem' or your subconscious will conveniently talk you to an answer somehow. That's very clearly a tactic for the show to feature other characters and figure how narrative things. If it were only people figuring things out, it'd probably be easier for me to ignore this lapse, but one character is presented as fist fighting someone who's not there. Another experiences one of his colleagues telling him that they should kill Lieutenant Garnet, and a third hallucinates someone telling her they committed the murder being investigated.
People who experience any degree of psychosis - as this is not something limited to mania - already experience a lot of assumptions that they will be dangerous and more prone to violence. This isn't to say that no one could ever be even a little dangerous while psychotic, but a work of fiction is not the same as an actual person talking about something. The writers are not required to use the Insane Equals Violent trope. They don't need to blur the lines of 'actually true or helpful' hallucination with 'questionably true' delusion - if the characters who experienced the "fear based hallucinations" around murder are shown to actually believe them or turn out to be correct.
