“Sorrow”

“Sorrow” truly is a real step towards taking an established continuity and leading it in a direction designed to move the story forward. It works well without any glaring mistakes and thus perhaps Flash was starting to find itself.

We open with Baylin wanting to return to Mongo because she hears the Voices of the Dead calling her. She explains that the time has come for The Sorrow. Annually, people of Mongo show their respect for those who died in a tragic accident many years ago. We learn that the two small moons are actually constructs of Mongo that were built to harvest the large natural moon. Unfortunately the harvesters brought back a sickness to Mongo that ravaged the population.

In Nascent City, Ming and Aura lead a ritualistic procession that is full of pomp, circumstance, and theatricality including a horde of young dancers. During rehearsal, Aura complains about being involved at all causing her father to lash out at her verbally. It turns out that one of the dancers is Jammer from BSG and he has an eye for Aura. Aura is surprised at his brazeness but is intrigued nonetheless.

Dale and Flash agree to go with Baylin to meet the Verdan pilgrimage to the burial grounds, while Zarkov is staying behind hoping to win a grant for his research while not mentioning how successful it’s been. It’s a humorous sidebar to the main storyline, but ultimately is a “we need a quick one shot for Zarkov since we can’t fit him in the main tale” type of arc.

Baylin leads them to the tomb and quickly discovers that the Guardians of the Dead have all been killed, their throats slit. The threesome goes into the tomb to see what they can discover. While in there Baylin gets shot with an arrow through her arm by a Guardian who thought the thieves had returned.

The thieves do return and it is no surprise that the Guardian is really one of them.

Meanwhile Aura’s love story continues and it’s pretty nauseating…and predictable. Ming discovers the little feelings the two are developing and well you can guess what happens. Aura follows Jammer to a lower class pub and Ming follows Aura. They both witness Jammer playing puppeteer and mocking Ming heavily. Ming disperses the crowd and personally kills Jammer telling Aura that he disrespected him, as did she for supporting him. It serves well to divide Aura and Ming further. So it does serve it’s purpose.

Meanwhile the thieves have taken the threesome prisoner and they plan to hold them for ransom. The thief who posed as a Guardian seems to be very reluctant and indeed pushes to allow Baylin to make her offering to the spirits. But when they choose to take Dale for their fun, Flash is able to distract them and take one of Baylin’s offerings from Earth (an aerosol spray can) and throw it into the fire causing a large explosion and a cave in. Flash and Baylin make it out but Dale is still caught in, but the Guardian protected her and is able to find a way out while the thieves are killed.

The Verdan never made it to the tomb which surprises Baylin greatly and she decides that she has to stay on Mongo to find out what happened, and Flash and Dale agree to stay with her and help her.

The reason why the Verdan don’t make it is the best sequence from the show so far. With the background of Ming and Aura’s ritualistic offering full of a great choir, and dancing, the sequences jumps from the dancing and theatrical performance to a whole squadron of Patriot soldiers slaughtering the Verdan in a very Revenge of the Sith Order 66 type sequence. It works very well and alone makes the episode.

B

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