The Seahawk
After the disappointing debut of Another Life on Netflix this week,Pandora returns with more sci-fi shenanigans, this time revolving around performance enhancing drugs and a missing ship. We begin with an impassioned speech from a soldier, Lieutenant Collins, before cutting to the group amazed at the workings of a photo-booth. All seems well until Ralen arrives and the soldier loses it, hitting him repeatedly. Thankfully, a quick electric blast to the back stops him in his tracks. Jax and Greg are kicked out the medical centre soon after, with it now locked down under quarantine. However, they go to Ralen and ask for a blood sample, given a spatter of the Lieutenant’s blood is still there. Rydine is a performance enhancing drug and given the soldier’s erratic, hot-headed behaviour, it turns out it was inside him at the time of the fight. With no mention of Rydine across the data logs, Jax is determined to get to the bottom of this and find out what’s being hidden. After recruiting Regan to the cause, she begins searching for information about the Seahawk and her crew, believing that the lost ship may hold the key. As it happens, the Seahawk was never actually destroyed. Making the leap to believe it could hold information about her parents, Jax decides to try and track down the missing vessel. They do find the ship too, held captive by trigger-itchy soldiers completely juiced up on Rydine. Believing a war is coming, Jax and Greg are held captive by them on their ship until Jax manages to convince the ones keeping an eye on her to make a trade for a crate of Rydine. They gullibly let their defences down, enough time for Jax to shoot the three soldiers. However, they’re out-manned, and outgunned, by the rest onboard the ship. After some time, Jax learns the Seahawk was not responsible for killing her family and the colony. However, the final flight of the Seahawk is upon them as they launch Operation Firebird. Greg sacrifices himself to save Jax and pushes her into the escape pod, hurtling Jax through space and away from the ship. Crying, Jax watches as the ship blows up while back on Earth, Ralen gives an impassioned speech about his origin. The episode then ends with Xander and The Professor playing chess while discussing the disillusioned soldiers. It turns out The Professor was in contact with the Seahawk the whole time. Once again Pandora sticks to the same conventional tropes running through the other two episodes. The anachronistic technology and colloquial dialogue feels completely out of sorts here and the group itself are too wrapped up in romance which overpowers the narrative. Instead of building a believable relationship between Jax and Greg, showing an abundance of kissing and intimate scenes together with little dialogue feels lazy and sloppily handled. It certainly softens what should be an emotionally charged moment at the end too. Still, there will be a market for this show but I doubt it’ll be anyone enthused with sci-fi. Having said that, the episodes are well paced and the overarching narrative around Jax’s parents interesting enough to keep you hooked here. Beyond that though, Pandora sticks to its guns and delivers another episode that pales in comparison to other sci-fi shows out there.
