Critical Mass is the ninth episode in the first season of The Expanse. It premiered on February 2, 2016 on Syfy as part one of the show's two-hour season finale.
Synopsis
A flashback to Julie's origin story reveals her trajectory. James Holden and Miller finally meet and team up to get to the bottom of the strange emergency situation happening on Eros. As the true horror of the events on Eros is revealed, an ailing Holden and Miller must overcome incredible odds if they hope to live to fight another day.
Recap
We begin … at the beginning. About seven weeks prior to Miller coming up with his conspiracy theory involving the Anubis and the Scopuli, to be more or less exact.
We're near Asteroid CA-2216862, where the Scopuli waits to intercept the Anubis. Julie Mao is on board, telling her OPA associates, Wan and Darren, that her father's weapon (!) is on board the Anubis, and they need to seize it to insure it's not something that will be used against Belters.
The OPA trio is surprised to find that the Anubis is not a simple science vessel but a stealth ship, one that easily overtakes the Scopuli. Wan and Darren are killed by the "scientists" on board whilst Julie is thrown into a padded room to be dealt with later.
Is this starting to sound familiar? Yep, we see the Anubis destroy the Canterbury, after which Julie escapes from her cell, only to find a completely abandoned ship. She makes her way to Engineering, coming into contact with some sort of blue glowing substance … and then screams in terror at what she sees in the reactor.
Julie leaves the Anubis on Chartered Belt Asteroid BA-834024112, takes the Anubis 1A shuttle to Eros Station and checks into the Blue Falcon Hotel under the name 'Lionel Polanski.' Her calls to Anderson Dawes go unanswered … and her body undergoes a grotesque and painful transformation, as whatever she came into contact with on the Anubis is slowly but most surely killing her.
Finally, a barely recognizable Julie crawls into the shower stall, succumbing to the last phase of her condition just as Miller, Holden, Naomi, Amos and Alex bust through the door …
A heartbroken Miller and the rest of the gang make their way back to the hotel lobby, where Sematimba meets them amongst the wreckage of the shoot-out. Sematimba tells them to get out and lay low while he tries to clean up the mess, though he's soon outranked once a sinister-looking fellow named Antony Dresden and his goons arrive, claiming they're looking for Julie Mao.
In Julie's room, Dresden takes samples from Julie's body, claiming that whatever happened to her isn't airborne … "but if it's wet, don't touch it … unless you want something incredible to happen." Dresden says there's enough gunk in Julie's body for whatever he has planned and commands his associate Rutger to tell the crew to "prepare the injections."
Dresden contacts Julie's father, Jules-Pierre Mao, breaking the news about his daughter's death but assuring him that he has a viable sample of what he calls the "protomolecule" and that the injections are being prepared. A map of Eros Station labeled "Protomolecule Evolution: Phase 2" is on display, looking a lot like the blueprint for a terrorist attack. The heartbroken Mr. Mao tells Dresden to proceed as planned.
On the streets of Eros, Holden and the gang plan to get to the Rocinante as quickly as possible, though a sudden radiation breach causes all of the ships in the station to go on lockdown. Miller theorizes that this incident was no accident and scurries off to investigate, followed by Holden, who tells Naomi to take off without him if he's not back at the Rocinante in three hours.
The people of Eros are starting to receive injections from CPM cops, allegedly an Iodine supplement as protection from the radiation. Meanwhile, Miller's hot on the trail of Dresden, whom he recognizes from the recording from Phoebe Station. Blaming Dresden for Julie's death, Miller tries to gun him down in the street, though he's stopped by Holden. Miller attacks Holden as Dresden and his goons board Shuttle 6H to Hotebisu Station.
Miller and Holden are soon accosted by the CPM cops that were escorting Dresden, who tell them to get to the shelter. Miller shoots one of them and interrogates the other: Mikey Ko, one of the many members of the Greigas gang that suddenly disappeared from Ceres after being offered jobs by the CPM. In fact, CPM hired all the Ceres crews, mostly to set up cameras and science gear all over Eros.
Eros Station is quickly becoming a nightmare as transit pods are closed, comms have gone dark and shelters are full. As a riot breaks out, Miller and Holden use a wounded Mikey Ko as a way to gain access to a shelter … where they find dozens of Eros citizens, writhing in pain on the floor.
Just then, the room is hit with a megadose of hard radiation. Miller and Holden didn't get out in time, and now only have a couple of hours to live …!
Meanwhile, on Anchorage Island in the Yukon Archipelago, Chrisjen Avasarala visits Franklin DeGraaf's widowed husband, Craig. Craig will never forgive Chrisjen for betraying Frank, though he allows her some time alone in Frank's study in order to say goodbye. Chrisjen finds three sharpened pencils in Frank's desk, which are actually data drives; on one of them, she finds the plans for an Advanced Fusion Prototype, which looks a lot like the reactor on board the Anubis …
Just then, on Tycho Station, Fred Johnson sends a broadcast revealing the information found on the data cube he took from Lopez's uniform. It gives a detailed analysis of the attack against the Donnager, revealing that the attackers were advanced stealth fighters, built at the Bush Naval Shipyards … on Earth!
Cast
(See Notes section for discussion of split episode versus double episode credits)
Main
- Thomas Jane as Josephus Miller
- Steven Strait as Jim Holden
- Cas Anvar as Alex Kamal
- Dominique Tipper as Naomi Nagata
- Wes Chatham as Amos Burton
- Paulo Costanzo as Shed Garvey (credit only)
- Florence Faivre as Julie Mao
- Shohreh Aghdashloo as Chrisjen Avasarala
- Shawn Doyle as Sadavir Errinwright
Guest Starring
- Chad L. Coleman as Fred Johnson
- François Chau as Jules-Pierre Mao
- Philip Akin as Craig
- Kevin Hanchard as Sematimba
- Daniel Kash as Dresden
Co-Starring
- Allen King as CPM #1
- Anthony Grant as Wan
- Brian Hamman as Rutger Merc
- Daryl Patchett as Proto Merc #2
- Dax Ravina as Mikey KO/Comp #2
- Elisa Moolecherry as Scientist
- Konima Parkison-Jones as CPM #5
- Paul Popowich as Darren
- Ric Garcia as Street Dealer
- Rick Parker as Eros Straggler #1
Media
- Cast credits on-screen
- See "Notes" section for discussion of split episode versus double episode credits.
- Cast interviews
- Others
Notes
- The title of the episode has two meanings. The first one,the minimum amount of fissile material needed to maintain a nuclear chain reaction (collision of atoms, which in turn releases massive amounts of energy, heat and pressure). The second one refers to the minimum size or amount of something required to start or maintain a venture.
- The credits for this episode varies depending on edited cuts. This may be primarily due to whether episode 9 "Critical Mass" and episode 10 "Leviathan Wakes" are cut together. Original broadcasts may have used the combined credits for both episodes.[Citation needed]
- Amazon Video streaming offers the episodes 9 and 10 as separate split episodes (2017-04). The combined double episode credits are shown in the media section of the Season 1 article found here. The split episode credits are shown below in the Cast credits on-screen section of this article. There are a many omissions from the credits when using the "episode 9 only" split episode credits as opposed to using the combined double "episode 9 & 10" credits.
References
External links
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"Dulcinea" • "The Big Empty" • "Remember the Cant" • "CQB" • "Back to the Butcher" • "Rock Bottom" • "Windmills" • "Salvage" • "Critical Mass" • "Leviathan Wakes" |
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