Photo courtesy of George Cifrancis
The Jessica Steen Page
- Pilot as she tries to persuade Power to let her infiltrate Med Lab One.
Influenza is sweeping through the Passages. Power and his team attempt to relieve the drastic shortage in vaccine with as much as Mentor can synthetise but the shortage is very severe. Power is unable to provide any more assistance since their facilities were not designed for mass production of vaccines.
Pilot suggests she infiltrates Med Lab One, Dread's medical facility and steal vaccines. As a former member of the Dread Youth, she would have intimate knowledge of the bases defences and would be able to enter the facility with the minimum difficulty. Power is reluctant but Pilot wins him over and he agrees to let her go.
Pilot decides to go without her Powersuit since it will reduce her chances of being detected once in the base. Armed with a few circuit breakers [or Scout's Specials] and wearing her old uniform, the team make for Med Lab One.
Upon arrival, Power and his team rapidly take out the biomech troopers patrolling the area. Pilot now has one hour to enter the facility and achieve her mission, before the troopers failure to return puts the base on alert. Pilot attempts to enter the base through an air vent but discovers, to her surprise that 'Some things have changed'.Enroute she is caught by a member of the Dread Youth, Erin. A fisticuff follows and Pilot dispatches the Dread Youth reluctantly with a short laser blast to the leg.But with characteristic bravado, Erin produces a grenade and threatens to blow them both up. Fortunately for Pilot, the Erin is also inexperienced and Pilot manages to disarm her without incident.She examines Erin's injury while explaining her presence to the horrified Erin, who cannot believe a Dread Youth member is betraying Dread.She questions Pilot furiously but Pilot has no time to engage in ideological battles; she gags Erin but promises to be back.
Crawling through an air duct, Pilot enters the facility.Masquerading as a guard, Pilot lures a technician into a lab and knocks him unconscious. Stealing his identity card and coat, she lets herself into the correct lab and gets the vaccines, and a First Aid Kit. She returns to Erin and treats her leg,while attempting to explain to Erin why she is here. Erin resists what she is being told, trying to suppress her own feelings of fear and pain, and to counter Pilot's words by reciting Dread's litany. To her surprise, Pilot joins in, reciting word for word with her and Erin realises that Pilot was one of them.
Just then, the alert.Dread is been alerted of the break in and he dispatches Soaron to find the culprit. The Power team have been monitoring the base communications and to assist Pilot in getting out, Power takes the XT-7 to hold off Soaron while the Junkship continues to the agreed rendezvous point.
Pilot successfully exits the facility and with ease dispatches the bio-mechs. She reaches the pick up point only to find a limping Erin waiting there, blaster drawn. In the nick of time, Tank arrives but Pilot tells him not to shoot - she wants to reason with Erin.
Pilot tells Erin she has a choice - she can leave with Pilot who will show her 'what it's really like' or she can stay, and let Pilot go. Erin's determination slowly evaporates and Pilot makes her way to the Skybike, firm in her belief that Erin will not shoot her. Her gamble pays off and she escapes with the vaccines, as a doubting Erin stands, watching her go.
The team return with the vaccines to the Passages. Tank asks Pilot how she knew that Erin would not shoot her. Pilot says that she didn't, she gambled on Erin's human side, which Pilot hopes she has managed to bring out and reflects on Erin is now in the same position as she was when she learned the truth.
Comment
This is one of Jessica Steen's finest moments as Pilot and provides us with some background information about the Dread Youth. The acting is superb, and it is one of the few episodes where the attention is exclusively focused on the character of Pilot.A slight foreshadow of Power's potentially sexist side as he initially refuses to let Pilot go to Med Lab One and the writers perhaps missed out on an opportunity to develop the Pilot-Power relationship angle, but this was perhaps too early.Steiger's mentions that the title 'Gemini and Counting' carries referances of twins and certainly, the producers made efforts to try and make Erin look a lot like Pilot. One got a sense that Pilot saw Erin not only as a younger version of herself, but almost in a sisterly fashion. Had the show survived, there might have been scope to reintroduce the character of Erin which would have afforded some interesting storylines.
Watch out for..
