Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, Recap 23: Psychocrypt

And a recapping we go. This episode is "Psychocrypt" which should be damn interesting. Not in the least because Queen episodes tend to be pretty cool.

And well, honestly, it's pretty much the best episode of the show. But I'm not supposed to know that yet. ;-)

Zachary Foxx and his Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day


For once we don't start with an image of a planet or asteroid in space. Instead we get creepy music and pink light shooting up around a shadow that materializes into Zach. The lights go away and Zach is standing in darkness. A pink light appears behind him and a female voice calls his name. It's Eliza, reaching out her arms and looking frightened.

Zach shouts her name and runs, in slow motion toward her, as the background coalesces into the halls of the psychocrypt. In a creepy echoing voice, Eliza tells him to come to her. As he runs to her, a number of crystal stasis chambers appear to be containing HIM in them. Not a good sign. Zach agrees as he examines it. The Crystalized Zach opens empty eye sockets and taps a badge that immediately melts. Eliza's face transforms into the Queen's, laughing, and then a Slaver Lord's. Zach runs and finds himself standing on a giant replica of Eliza's psychocrystal, with her face, distressed, inside.

The queen's laughter rings in his ears as he reaches a hand out to touch it, and it ripples like water and transitions to actual water, with Zach standing in it outside.

Dreams are a bitch to recap coherently, you realize. Unless they're my dream of time travelling and then everyone breaks out in song. But that was weird enough.

The queen's hand, giant and purple, bursts out of the water and grabs Zach, who screams and falls into the abyss. Then he wakes up.

To be fair, if it were me, I'd have had a nervous breakdown a good ten episodes before.

Zach's room is fairly swanky actually. Big green bed, spotless magenta carpet. One pillow that looks oddly blocky. Zach is also in sleep clothhes, and hey, his arm looks perfectly normal when he isn't being all bionical, which is interesting to see. (Since he usually wears his uniform, or other long sleeved costumes, I'd wondered.)

Zach's arm promptly turns black and gold, with the weird orb on top glowing and beeping. That seems not good.

Still in sleep clothes (a very unflattering yellow, poor Zach, you're a good looking man. You should dress it. You're not Shane Gooseman after all, you don't have the excuse of a genetically fucked up sense of taste), Zach stands out looking at the sun rise over the ocean.

JV appears on the monitor and greets him "Good morning." Zach mutters it back, JV's bioscans have told it that Zach had a rough night. AIs can tell these things apparently. JV says his sleep lights, whatever those are, should be operating properly, but Zach says that he turned them off.

Because he has such a quiet and uneventful job that he doesn't have to worry about lapses of judgment and poor physical performance coming from poor sleep I guess.

Zach visibly makes a decision and orders JV to order him an Interceptor with his priority code. JV protests that he has a mission briefing in an hour. Zach's all "Fuck it." Though not in those words.

I kind of blame Commander Walsh for this. If you order a few more rescue attempts, then maybe your group leader wouldn't go all AWOL, you know.

JV asks if Zach's feeling all right. Zach stares at a picture of his comatosed and mind-stolen wife (pre-coma/mind-stealing of course) and says "No." Zach tells JV to "Take care of everything for [him]."

Uh oh, suicide mission, here we go!

So Zach takes the Interceptor, when he enters Longshot's airspace, he identifies himself and requests priority landing. They okay it. Zach gets admittance into a weird green rotating tunnel and greets the scientist inside as "Matt." The walls of the tunnel stop rotating and we see that the panels in the walls are actually the walls of the stasis chamber where Eliza is held.

Matt does a scan and tells Zach he's right, Eliza's brainwaves have been fluctuating every night for a week, and he doesn't understand it. Zach demands to know what's happening to her. Um, Zach, he just said he didn't understand this. Matt warns that her lifesigns are dropping. At this, Zach gets all scary and shouts at him to get her out of there.

Matt-the-Doc, undoubtedly remembering that this man is a living cannon, is understandably freaked but protests he needs command clearance. Zach pulls out a gun instead. This apparently is command clearance enough for Matt, who goes to the control panel. Clever Matt does manage to press a silent alarm though.

This causes Longshot personnel to alert Commander Walsh. The fellow tells Walsh quite simply that Zach's there, has a tech hostage and is trying to revive his wife.

Really Walsh, you ought to have seen this coming, but at the sight of your awesome mustache, I just can't stay mad at you.

Walsh gives the order to alert Q-Ball and patch him in.

In the cryo tunnel thing, Matt's stalling while armed folks get into place right outside. Walsh's face appears on the monitor. Zach tells him he's not going to hurt anyone. Walsh gently reassures him that he knows that, and tells him to put down the blaster and they'll talk. Zach hesitates, and then does so. The armed folks come up and the scene segues to Walsh's swanky office.

Damn, that man has a lot of aquariums. Maybe it's in his genes. The team and Q-Ball are there too. Zach insists the dreams are real and Eliza is calling for him. Q-Ball, in his obnoxiously nasal voice, scoffs that it's more likely the Queen.

You're probably right, Q-Ball, but shut the fuck up. For some reason, though everyone else is in their uniforms, Goose is wearing a solid black catsuit type thing with his gun holster.

Which really makes you wonder what exactly they called him away from to have this meeting.

Q-Ball suspects that the Queen's finally using her half of the crystal and using it to tap into the half that's still around Eliza's neck. Zach mournfully says that the distance is so great that Eliza doesn't stand a chance of surviving.

Q-Ball confirms, if the Queen keeps using the crystal it'll kill her.

Seriously. What is UP with the black catsuit, Shane? What the hell? Did they call you away from a burglary job or something?! It's so conspicuous and no one's saying ANYTHING. JEEZ.

Niko, a much more sympathetic voice of reason than Q-Ball, tells Zach that the Queen is trying to lure him back. Shane, who on close-up is not actually wearing a catsuit, but an entirely jet black variation of his standard uniform, which does not actually clear up any of my questions, leans forward and insists that they broke out of the Queen's psychocrypt before. Goose wants them to go. I'm utterly shocked.

Zach vetoes the "we" and says he's going alone. Walsh stands up (and interestingly, Shane visibly slouches a bit as he does, ceding Walsh the higher ground) and says he can't allow a galaxy ranger to willingly walk into a trap. Zach isn't taking this lying down and announces that he's resigning. He throws his badge onto Walsh's desk.

Way to throw away your best weapon, Zach. Walsh looks terrible and sympathetic, but not surprised, and urges him not to. Shane quickly begs him to reconsider.

I think this is the first time we've ever heard Shane use his full first name. Niko, Walsh and Doc call him "Zachary" all the time, but so far from Goose, it's only been "Zach" or "Captain."

Zach's implacable, he's going after the other half of Eliza's crystal. Walsh is equally as implacable though, he apologizes sincerely and tells him he's confined to quarters until he can decide on further procedure. Zach tells him to do what he has to, but Zach is not going to let Eliza die.

We don't see Walsh's response, but we do see the armed guards he has outside Zach's quarters. Inside, Zach is talking to JV, who gives him a status report about the two armed guards and tells Zach he's on priority surveillance. JV tells Zach that he/it's been thinking.

Outside, the guards press a button and watch Zach at his desk. One of them asks the other if he really thinks Zach's cracking up. The other points out that Zach's got an "experimental bionic system" and a series five implant, making him unique. Which isn't actually answering the question. JV suddenly appears on the screen and suggests that the guards look very tired and offers them a cold soda. The guards refuse, but they cheer up when JV offers to call down sandwiches.

These guards are kind of dumb. JV says it'll take a minute and whirls about the screen. The guard suggests he hurry, they can't leave the system unchecked. And no one asks why he can't use ZACH's terminal. Idiots.

Inside, Zach is packing something in a case. Suddenly the door opens. It's Niko, urging him to hurry. Zach says that they'll bust both of them for this. Niko grins and suggests they have to find evidence first. She urges him to come on, actually calling him Captain, which, while not as rare as Goose calling him Zachary, is still a fairly infrequent occurrance.

They run past the corridor where JV's distracting the guards.

Seriously, Walsh only put guards on ONE door? That's pretty freaking dumb. Unless it was supposed to be one guard per door, and these idiots just decided to hang out. It'd fit with their behavior so far at least.

Anyway, Doc and Niko make it to the hanger bay, where Goose, still in his inexplicable black uniform is waiting and whispering at them to hurry, leading them to the waiting Interceptor. He tells the surprised looking Zach that the trans-star drives are optimum, and he'd tuned them himself. Doc's jovial and loud greeting completes the ensemble as he urges them not to start the party without him. Aw.

Doc tells them the computers are down for another minute at least. Goose grins, and Zach is about to protest, but thanks them all instead. Doc gives a rueful sigh and quotes that it's a far far better thing they do than they have ever done. They wish Zach luck as he boards his interceptor and takes off.

A surprised officer notes the unauthorized interceptor launch, but no one stops him as Zach leaves orbit. Aw! Goose not only prepped his Interceptor, he gave him Alma as well! That's adorable!

On Walsh's screen, a tech reports that they lost Zach. In Walsh's office, the other three rangers look studiously innocent. Or at least mildly surprised. I'm guessing that Walsh isn't fooled, going by the particular tone of voice he uses when he says that they still don't know who knocked out the computer, turned off the security channel, and prepped the interceptor. By that point he's shouting, and pounds the desk. He does seem to wink just slightly as he does so.

Doc looks wide-eyed, Niko has a hand to her chin, and Goose just looks bland. Niko shamelessly gasps that they still haven't found the culprits. Walsh's eyes go from one to the other and he, dryly, says that it's a suspicious case.

It's remarkably hard to recap this scene when I'm snickering so hard.

Doc gets even more wide-eyed and asks if he's suggesting it's an inside job. Walsh leans back in his chair and says that there could be a few court marshals around here. Goose isn't even trying to play innocent and just smirks and tells him to tell them about it.

Walsh orders the three of them to go bring Zach back. Then grouses to their beaming faces that they can stop congratulating themselves. Walsh snaps that they shouldn't think he doesn't know who's responsible and that they don't appreciate the gravity of the situation. Wheiner's already "raising cane over it."

In a live action show, Walsh would totally have said Hell, and the writers aren't even trying to hide that. Heh.

Anyway, the whole series five program is in jeopardy. Doc, irrepressibly, asks if he means that they get to go home. Walsh says that they'll get to serve two years on the Pluto base as Series Two Rangers. Ouch. Doc agrees and moans that it's worse than solitary confinement. Niko shudders that it's a lot, lot colder.

On Tortuna, Geezy the Pendulant is in his store, singing to himself. A man, noticeably NOT dressed like a Zanguil, but in stead wearing a brown cowboy hat and brown cloak over a navy blue shirt and pants comes in. It's Zach of course, all renegady and shit. Zach's there for information, and he's looking mighty pissed off too. Geezy squeals as he recognizes him and asks how "this humble pendulant" can help him.

Zach wants him to get him to the Queen's psychocrypt. Geezy freaks out at the thought and points an accusatory finger at him and says that "Hummings" are crazy. Zach plays hardball and says he'll lead every crown agent he can find here unless Geezy helps. Geezy begs him not to even say that. Zach kicks at some weird artifact looking thing in curiosity, which Geezy protests is priceless and a work of the great Padomo.

Unfortunately, Niko's not here to provide background info. Zach asks if it's worth more than the price on Geezy's head, and Geezy, taking the hint, reveals that there is a ship going to the psychocrypt tomorrow and it'll be taking aliens to be tested by the "crypt masters".

Zach sets down the artifact and a relieved Geezy continues, explaining that the Queen is getting desparate since she "ran out" of Gherkins. Nice way to put genocide. Now she has to find new life forms to power the crystals. And she's trying out every life form she can find, down to the spongefish in the hold of Geezy's good friend Produce's spaceship, "The Whispering Bafly." Zach announces that he will also be aboard. Geezy hurries them off but not before lamenting that he will never understand "Hummings."

The Bafly is orange and kind of insectoid looking. If an insect mated with a tractor trailer. Zach, now in his uniform again, follows Geezy, who points out the adorable spongefish. They apparently have as much brain as a rock. Each? Or all together?

Altogether, it looks like, as one slams into the window of the crate. Zach, wearing an odd helmet, opens one of the crates and jumps in the water. Geezy wishes him well and reminds him that when he's caught, he never saw Geezy and for that matter, Geezy doesn't exist. Zach pops his head out and says he'll give her the message, before closing the crate.

Geezy watches the ship take off, breathing a sigh of relief at no more hummings. Even as Niko, Doc and Shane are standing not too far away. Heh.

The Rangers follow Geezy into his hideout, where apparently, he's playing a video game. He's quite distressed to be interrupted by more hummings.

Captain Produce is cleared to land at the Queen's oddly castle shaped asteroid. Zach peers out the crate as the queen's soldiers start unloading the ship. Produce, also a pendulent, announces that he has the twenty more Volian Spongefish as ordered. One of the robot soldiers points out that if they're not healthy, Produce is in trouble. Produce is annoyed but insists they're healthy but he's skeptical about them being able to stir a glow in any psychocrystals.

As the crates are conveyer belted away, Zach pops out of his. He has one of those scanners, conveniently waterproof, and picks up Eliza's brainwaves. He runs off.

In the throne room, a robot announces that the dream machine is ready. The Queen hands over Eliza's crystal, declaring that it's time to give Zachary another dream and that he'll surely come to keep her from using it. They place the Eliza crystal into the machine, which starts blaring bright pink light. We can see Eliza's distressed face inside. She smiles and says into the machine "Zachary, Zachary, come to me."

Zach surely has. In fact, he's in a vent, watching this with a growl. Unfortunately, awake or asleep, the machine's still having some effect as he groans in pain, screams (probably not a good idea) and finds himself back in the psychocrypt-dream.

This time though, after Eliza begs him to come to her, her face changes and she says "Can't you see? It's a trap." Her face fades into the Queen's, and she declares that as long as he's ruled by his heart, they're all doomed. She blasts him and then her image crumbles.

In the throne room, she stands up and she and her soldiers exit. I guess she didn't hear his scream after all?

Zach kicks open the grating on the vent and heads to the crystal holding Eliza's brain. Above him, a memory bird, and not a harmless one like Bubblehead, is watching balefully. It divebombs Zach's head as he reaches for the crystal. Zach races to the door, only to come face to face with the Queen and her army. Oops.

He recoils and runs for it, as the robot soldiers start shooting. The Queen orders minimum stun, which is never a good sign. Fortunately, they shoot like Stormtroopers. Zach doesn't have any trouble until he gets to the opposite door, which slams shut before he can get through. He whirls around and starts shooting.

Seriously, these guys are terrible shots.

Eventually though one gets a lucky shot in and Zach falls, dropping his wife's crystal and whispering her name as he does. The queen picks up the crystal and tosses it up and down before gloating that she'll send Zach to Earth as her most powerful slaver lord, in charge of a battlefleet even, to crush the League of Planets.

I wonder why she never made a slaver lord out of Kilbane. Granted, he's an idiot. But I'd imagine he'd make a powerful one.

Poor Zach wakes up to find himself in one of those giant test tube doohickeys, about to get his mind sucked out. Apparently, it is not a pleasant process, as we see when the machine glows red, and Zach doubles over, screaming in agony.

Jerry Orbach's normally a brilliant actor, but I hate to say, he's not very good at the agonized screaming thing.

Zach has a vision of Eliza, who tells him she missed him, and tells him that he must be strong of heart and that their spirits will always be one. Aw.

The Queen pulls a lever and the light stops and Zach falls over, a slaver lord materializing above him. The Queen's face flickers over it as she orders him to serve her well. Eek.

Another ship like the Bafly is approaching the asteroid, this one piloted by Geezy himself. The Rangers wait in long boxes basically. Geezy warns them not to take longer than agreed, or he won't be there.

Shane calmly tells him that if he doesn't want to be looking over his shoulder for him, then he'd better be there. Shane's really good at the soft voiced threats. Geezy seems to agree, and he looks freaked as he retorts that they're fools, doomed to be psychocrystalized. He's cut off though as they dock.

Soon, the Rangers are running, and Goose has picked up a black hat to go with his outfit. Niko urges them to hurry. Something is wrong.

They're met in the hall by a slaver lord, and immediately draw their weapons. The queen's voice comes out, ordering Zach to fight for her. A yellow light blasts from the crystal and forms into Zach in front of them, much to the other Rangers' horror.

Zach pulls out his gun and shoots. He's got better aim than most of the Queen's underling. It only just misses Shane, and knocks off his hat in the process. Goose steps forward, straight in Zach's line of fire and says, "Hit me, buddy."

Actually, it may have hit Shane, as he taps his badge and turns titanium before Zach's next shot hits. He runs forward, pushes Zach aside HARD, and grabs the crystal off of the slaver lord's chest. Hah!

Goose reverts to human, as the Queen's face appears on the slaver lord and shouts a denial. Both slaver lord and Zach vanish. Goose hands Niko the crystal, and she taps her badge, discovering that Zach's body's in the psychocrypt.

Elsewhere, the queen gloats that her plan worked perfectly. It would have worked better if you'd kept the crystal, lady. But anyway, now she'll have all the rangers. I doubt that.

Anyway, she apparently was watching them on her screen, since we see them there until the monitor turns off and she stands up.

Niko leads them to the right crypt and tells Doc they have to get Zach out. But they have company. Two robot guards notice them and run up, only to be shot down fast. Doc opens the chamber and Niko places the slaver lord's crystal onto the crystal around Zach's neck. Both glow and disappear. Zach opens his eyes. He looks annoyed.

Niko helps him up, Doc welcomes him back. Zach mutters about dreaming, but is cut off by Shane who says that there's no time to reminisce, and they start running. Doc supporting Zach, while Goose brings up the rear. Our Gooseman throws some kind of spherical object at the soldiers, which explodes nicely. He orders Doc to open the bay doors.

While he does so, Shane and Niko toss grenades at the soldiers. Zach is rubbing his head and all uncoordinated and out of sorts. Well, you were a robot for a bit, tried to kill your friends, and got whammed something good by Goose when he took your brain back. It's probably understandable. Doc urges him to hold it together a minute longer, calling him Captain even!

Doc sends in Tripwire to disable the door, but Tripwire shouts that it's a trap. Shane, sounding amused, says "Oh, really?" And stands in front of it.

There are indeed many soldiers inside, in unison they ask what Goose and company are doing in here. Goose grins and tosses a handful of grenades in there. Well done, my boy. There is exploding. Doc calls him a show-off. He calls Tripwire back and they run for it.

They get to the bay where Geezy's waiting. There's quite the army after them. Geezy and Goose take the pilot seats. And Goose tells him "Fast and dirty, Geezy, let's blow!"

O...kay, Shane. You win the Guy Gardner award of inappropriate comment of the episode. Have a monkey to spank.

Geezy has much the same reaction and mutters "Hummings." They blast off. Getting chased by the fighters of course. Goose wants to know where the weapon controls are. Sadly, Geezy is all "What weapons?" Doc comes up and hints that it'd be good to zip them into hyperspace. Geezy agrees, all "Don't rush me." And they blast off.

Back at Longshot, Eliza still sleeps in stasis as all the rangers, plus Q-Ball and Walsh are gathered. Q-Ball reveals that there was a harmonic factor in Zach's bionics that amplified the Queen's dream machine and now the dreams will end. Zach somberly points out that Eliza's still trapped. Everyone is sympathetic. Niko points out that the Queen will keep her crystal as a trophy. Meaning, I guess, that she won't risk using it up.

Walsh is surprisingly short next to Zach, and he offers Zach his badge back. Zach takes it back and proclaims that they'll free her one day, he knows it. The episode ends.

--

Aw, that episode really is probably the best in the series. Quite a few episodes manage suspense fairly well, but very few actually manage dramatic too. It was about time to revisit Eliza's storyline, and Jerry Orbach did a fantastic job.

This was pretty much Zach's episode of course, and the poor guy got put through the ringer. He really hasn't been dealing with the whole Eliza thing, instead burying himself in his job, and now it's come round and bitten him on the ass.

We also got to see that Zach's deadly sin is Pride. If he'd allowed the other Rangers to go with him, Eliza probably would have been freed, by now. At the very least, they would have been far less likely to fall into the trap.

Similarly, if Zach hadn't dramatically tossed his badge on Walsh's desk, he would have at least had the Thunderbolt to help clear the way. It might not have let him free, but he'd have made a better showing.

Then again, who knows if the Queen wouldn't have been able to make him use it on the others. Goose could have probably survived it, but the others probably wouldn't be so lucky. So maybe Zach's pride saved them all.

It was good to see them all rally behind him, too. The escape was very cute, as was Zach's face as one by one his teammates showed up to help him leave. It wasn't smart to go alone, but they were going to help him as much as he let them.

They all had good moments. Nothing very surprising of course. We could have predicted Niko would be practical and helpful, that Doc would groan to a point and pull through, or that Shane wasn't going to bother to let anything like common sense stop him, but it's always good to see that anyway. Sometimes surprises are overrated.

And even Walsh, in the end, came through when he gave Zach his badge back. He had every right to disband the team or court martial them or some other disciplinary measure, but instead he let it go. This time. Walsh is as awesome as his mustache.

Speaking of Walsh, I'm still really intrigued by that weird body language dynamic between him and Shane in his office. I mean, Goose is perfectly fine with leaning over the desk and insisting that they go, but as SOON as Walsh stands up, he's close to rolling over and showing his soft parts in submission. It's a dynamic that'll make sense later, but since this is the first time we see it, it's significant enough to note now.

(It's also funny to note that as much as Goose is the Wolverine-esque renegade of the group, he's the one immediately protesting Zach's resignation and begging him to reconsider.)

I really liked the thing with the names. I thought it was a very subtle way to underscore the emotional interaction of each scene. Walsh calls him Zachary to calm him down in the cryo-chamber, which I think he's done before, but it still has an effect. Walsh is more paternal than commanding officer there, and Zach responds to it.

When Shane calls him "Zachary" it's right after Zach resigns. And it's notable because he's NEVER used it before. But at this moment, Shane's not trying to reason with his comrade ("Zach") or his superior officer ("Captain"), he's trying to reason with the man, his friend, who's grieving and desperate.

Niko and Doc almost never call Zach by his rank, so each time they do it's immediately noticeable. They do it because he needs it, or they do. When Niko breaks him out, he needs to know that she's there for him, loyal to him, and following his lead. And that's what she's saying when she calls him Captain. With probably an added element of "This isn't really mutiny and you still have a place here," since he'd already resigned by this point. Even if he's not a Captain, she still thinks of him as one.

When Doc uses it, it's a reassurance. Zach's confused and disoriented. Doc's not as sensitive as Niko, so it might be purposeful or not, but by using Captain, he's underscoring Zach's identity. He's a Galaxy Ranger. He's a Captain. He's with his team. And they're getting him out of there. There's probably an added underscore of "Thank god, you're not an evil robot and trying to kill us anymore" in there too.

It's a nice bit by the writers that lets us all read our own interpretations into it.

I feel like I should have more to say about the episode, but I really don't. It was great though. Probably the single best episode the show ever has. It's legitimately, genuinely a great episode, not just awesome.

I'd still like to know what the fuck was up with Goose's black uniform though. Seriously, he wears it the entire episode and NOTHING IS SAID ABOUT IT. I mean, when a character wears the same uniform for twenty-two episodes, then shows up in an all-black variation, you'd at least expect SOMEONE to mention SOMETHING about it. Jeeze!