The Man Who Fell To Earth, Ep 3

 

Hello, Weirdos!

How are we doing on this fine day? Mercury in Retrograde has just begun, is it kicking your ass yet?

While you're picking your hind parts up off the ground, here's our outline to discuss Ep3 of Showtime’s The Man Who Fell To Earth

Chiwetel Ejiofor as the Anthean alien Faraday on ShowTime's The Man Who Fell To Earth

• Director: Alex Kurtzman
• Writers: Alex Kurtzman & Jenny Lumet (Walter Tevis himself actually writes 3 episodes)
• Producers:  Adrian Kelly, Jane Maggs & Bill Wolkoff

Before we get started…

We would like to mention a quick correction for our previous podcast, because through continued reading, I discovered that T.J.’s true motivation is not to just gather info, not to bring water back to Anthea - it’s to bring the very last of his species (which in the book he says it’s down to 300, in the show Faraday says they’re down to a few thousand) to Earth in order to infiltrate governments, companies, and militaries in order to “guide” or manipulate human beings away from our inevitable fate that will be the same as Anthea if we don’t change now.  He has good intentions, but like Professor Bryce keeps thinking - How are we supposed to know that?

#FoodForThought

*Intro Script*

Janae: What’s Up, Weirdos! I’m Janae

Amanda: I’m Amanda.  And together we are

Both: Girls Go Books Deep

Janae: We take deep dives into the Fantasy & Science Fiction content you love the most

Amanda: Today, we’re talking about Episode 3 of The Man Who Fell To Earth on Showtime, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Naomie Harris, featuring Rob Delaney and Sonya Cassidy.

Janae: So, hit that like button

Amanda: and stay tuned…

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*Intro Music*

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Janae: Hello Everybody! Thank you so much for joining the conversation today. Amanda and I are currently watching The Man Who Fell To Earth and discussing Episode 3: New Angels of Promise.

Key Points

• Small amount of time jumping in this episode.  Keep in mind that when we see Hatch and Edie interacting for the first time, it’s 2017.  Once that first scene is finished, we’re back in our current time (which is actually still the story that’s being told by Faraday in the present.)
• Cold Fusion: A hypothesized type of nuclear reaction that would occur at, or near, room temperature. It would contrast starkly with the “hot” fusion that is known to take place naturally in stars & artificially in H bombs & prototype fusion reactors under immense pressure, at temps of millions of degrees (such as the Large Hadron Collider in CERN)
• Quantum Fusion: A Quantum fusion reactor uses Q waveforms to force the value of the molecular Hamiltonian.  Once the value is high enough to supply the mass-energy difference between a hydrogen ion plus an electron and the mass of a neutron or neutron cluster, that energy converts to mass in an electron capture event.
• SIGINT: “Signals Intelligence” part of the NSA 
• Base 60: Form of arithmetic last used by the Mesopotamians 3600BC made up of mostly symbols and ticks

• HATCH FLOOD: 
  • A flood hatch, literally a flood gate. 
  • There was a huge flood in Hatch, NM causing residents to be evacuated on 8/15/06 and again 5/23/21
• EDIE FLOOD:
  • “Prosperous in War”
  • Female form of Eddy (their father’s name was Edward) also another water term.
  • An eddy is a current of air or water running back or in an opposite direction to the main current especially a circular one - basically, think of a whirlpool or water going down a drain.

*Episode Outline*

• First introduced to two new characters in the first main scene of the episode.  Hatch Flood and his Sister Edie Flood are run their deceased father’s tech company OriGen.  She seems to be the main COO/CEO and he is a Risk Assessor. 
• Notice that both of these people are named after Water terms. 
• Hatch is pulled out of the Book Club to get fired by his sister for supposedly trying to sell off tech blueprints to another company, when he says that he was just trying to understand it. But because he put it on his personal computer and removed it from the building, it’s stealing and he’s immediately terminated. 
• But in the interaction, we get a bunch of great info.
  • “Whatever contracts Dad inherited when he took over when he took over OriGen he left us w/ massive exposure…
  • [Newton’s 10th Patent] was classified as top secret by the DoE *fucking terrifying* You didn’t know that and neither did I.  Because Dad didn’t see fit to tell us about it before he jumped off a cliff.
  • No body knows what it is, what it does, why was it written in Base 60?  “It’s just word salad!” Then why was it classified the day he went missing?

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• Back at the Falls Household, Faraday is still on the flood.  They pick him up and to their amazement, he’s light as a feather. So that’s another consistency with the book. 
• So, Janae was right - they give him a bunch of water to help him out.  It works. After he drinks the water, all of this black tar comes out of his body and floats away. What the hell is he vomiting out? Radiation? Cancer? Toxins? Tar? Bad Vibes? TF….
• The emotional reactions they give after he’s healed is so on point for me. Gratitude. Disbelief. She’s holding on by a thread and literally scared to believe that he’s fine and this is real.
• The dialogue here is written so well. I love how they talk about their past without dumping information on you.  They kind of did that in the previous scene with Edie and Hatch, but when people fight - they tend to do that. Info dump, call everything they can to prove that what they did wasn’t wrong….
• It’s all a great way to give you emotions, while also moving the story along.  She can’t drag them along with her everywhere. But if dad is miraculously fixed, he can watch her daughter and she’s free to take her hero’s journey.
• His mind is like a Mr. Clean Sponge - grabbing every little morsel. So the fact that they have him nonstop staring at an iPad, it makes perfect sense to be able to hurry his speech patterns and behavior along.
• How do you thank someone for something so major??
• We then finally hear the basic foundation of the plan from Faraday, and see the way they’re going to get human evolution to take that next step.  And that’s through him puking up a tesseract lol and explaining that he has the power of Quantum Fusion, that she was the closest person in human history to ever get close enough to possibly imagining how to do it.
• Newton’s 10th Design is a regenerating cell. Inexhaustible, limitless, totally clean, no decay.  They need this design to get Anthea back to where it was before, in order to save their world. In order to achieve fusion - they need water. But their seas have boiled a while ago. That’s why they need Earth. 
• I couldn’t have imagined this… “You did imagine.  You came closer than anyone in human history.  And when you couldn’t continue, you still chose to work as a caretaker of the planet.”

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• Back in Alaska, Spencer searches the house and finds the film and projector, watches it, and sees them blind Thomas. They also peel the skin away from his face and you can see his alien form underneath.  Spencer sees this and you can just see the obsession forming in his eyes. He’s practically salivating.  Then he leaves with the film after torching the house
• What I want to know… this was supposedly 1984 when the film was being taken - there were camcorders back then. Why the hell does this look like an old timey film from the fuckin 40’s??? 9/14/84
• The doc talking in the recording is Gregory Papel, and it’s the Icarus Program (nice Book easter egg there)
• He keeps saying “MaryLou” but the woman’s name from the book/movie was Betty Jo… so I’m not sure what’s going on there.
• Not sure if it’s important or not, but they really made a point of giving you the lyrics “ I don’t want to set the world on fire, I just want to start a flame in your heart.” Again, really old ass song. No wonder young people can’t figure out the difference between the early and late 20th cent, because media does stupid shit like this.
• The Ink Spots, 1941

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• We come back to Justin and Faraday as they travel to Seattle. Faraday is floating in the hotel pool fully clothed, which is cute, but wouldn’t the chlorine be super off-putting to him?
• They have a great exchange and strike a deal in order to help each other fix both of their planets - Justin agrees to be a Scientist again. Yay
• And just like all sadistic fatherly mentor types: Do this mission, this is the info I think you need. Don’t worry, you’ll figure out the rest of it. Oh, don’t worry about how you’re getting home. I got you.  Do you?????
• Told to Find the Wizard of Risk: Hatch Flood

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• When we see Hatch again, he seems really down on his luck, having a bad day. 
• 2 seconds before he meets Justin & Faraday, we see that he has shingles. So, something that was a problem for him before (chicken pox/10th patent) is flaring up again and reactivating to be a pain in his side one more time.  Ha. Metaphors.
• I was instructed to Harness your Rage against OriGen. Lol.
• Newton sent me.  He said you had a good nose, but the only thing you couldn’t sniff out was you.  Justin again, shows that she’s smart and pretty good at thinking on her feet.
• They are the Angels of New Promise.

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• Spencer’s back, and he is shooketh! But we get the full run down of Newton's story from him as he’s filling Drew (Kate Mulgrew) in.
  • 1975 Newton comes here
  • Makes a fortune off of 9 patents that he uses to start World Enterprises
  • Leads the tech industry for a decade
  • CIA grabs him
  • They annex the company, box it up, ship it to the UK in order to avoid congressional oversight. (review, monitoring, supervision of federal agencies and policy implementation)
  • Folded it into a British industrial supplier called OriGen run by Edward Flood
  • Meanwhile Newton “disappears”
  • During the interrogation, he revealed his 10th patent, but he wouldn’t give it up all the way. He wouldn’t explain it. Cryptography couldn’t crack it, it’s written in Base 60
  • All they know is that there’s a new visitor, and there’s a blueprint for a power source from outer space sitting in the OriGen vault and Newton is still in the wind.
• We also learn:
  • His psych map from the CIA inclines him towards obsessive tendencies.
  • He has no memories of the first 8 years of his life.
  • He was crazy fixated on it… 
  • Searched forever for his parents
  • Drew seems to be the person who adopted him. “Fuck.  I put a lot of effort into you.” The surrogate mother of some kind?

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• Hatch finally caves and goes to see Faraday and Justin
• He is very much the Nathanial Bryce of the tv show. Super anxious about his “crazy” ideas about where Newton is from and is terribly worried that this last design is some sort of weapon.
• He’s freaking out. But it’s a great monologue of risk assessment for a world on fossil fuels.  He is so funny!!!
• But Faraday gets him on board because they literally have to. This is the next step in the evolution of the planet.  Take it and nothing will ever be the same. 

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• This guy spencer literally makes me want to puke
• Pulls a major power play with Ms. Dominguez in many ways.  
• Insults her accent.
• He plays games with her, and she knows the game well enough to play it back.  Whether or not she reported her uncle - that’s fucked - but makes me wonder if it was purely for her ambitious career or not.  Even so - ruthless. 
• Which is what he’s testing for and ultimately likes about her.  Giving her a really really hard time is his way of sussing out if she worthy/strong enough or not.
• She’s dealing with his cringiness in order to get ahead, to add this to her resume and move up in the ranks.  She’s playing the game like a pro. Not sure if she’s likable or not.
• He definitely has a chubby after seeing her get pissed off.

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• Back on the road, and this time to London!
• The pacing is a bit quicker for this episode.
• Hatch is hilarious, this guy just knows mad people and somehow has all these favors lined up for him?
• The plane! The pressure making bubbles in his skin suit!! Lmao. He looks worried as he’s boarding the plane.  Yeah, if an elevator was such a big deal to Newton, just imagine what an Elevator can do to his body as it’s lifting off.
• At the brunch - he seems obsessed with the egg shape.  I think this will come back to play.
• The bird scene! Cracked me up.
• Edie is incredibly frustrating.  She’s blind as F. you can tell she was daddy’s little girl
• But then we get to the meat of it - Book Club.  The opening and closing scenes come full circle. Faraday goes up to help someone causing a bit of a ruckus.  Mentions his quantum fusion and everyone shuts the hell up.
• He pulls out his reactor and all the lights in London come one - bright!
• It’s the ultimate moment of redemption for Everyone!!

Questions & Answers

• 3 Main Mysteries (so far):
  • What happened to Justin and her family to get them into this situation?
  • Does Newton actually want to help Antheans, or is this all a play for something much pettier?
  • What Insurance/Film is the old man talking about and how will it come into play with the douche canoe from the CIA? / Was Newton in those woods, torturing the last member of the team that took his vision?
• We got the answer to the film.  We know what was on it, and how it influences Spencer, but not the story as a whole just yet.
• New Mysteries: 
  • Why did Hatch’s dad hate him so much??
  • Who the hell is Mary Lou?
  • What’s up with Spencer’s childhood?? Is he another Dexter?

*Outro Script*

Janae: That’s all we have for today, everyone.

Amanda: As always - Thank you for listening and subscribing to our weekly deep dives into the geeky culture we all love so much.

Janae: Talking with you guys is the best part of our week, so please stop by our Instagram and say Hi

Amanda: And with that, we bid you wake up

Janae: take up all the space

Both: and we’ll see you next week.