Silo (S1, E9)
BAM!
That sound you hear, crashing down with clanging finality through the hundred-plus set of spiral stairs that link the many levels of the eponymous silo, is of an autocratic system finding itself falling apart, one defiant action after another.
In the penultimate episode of the Silo‘s opening season, the pace of rebellion is only accelerating but rather than some melodramatically epic riot or epiphanic moment when any and all blinkers fall off, what this smartly-written series gives us is one nuanced electric scene after another, all powerfully realised with the kind of thoughtful humanity that speaks of the need for connection to reality and truth, and which underscores that autocratic systems only survive as long as people give them permission to.
When people such as Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson), now ex-sheriff and ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- and survivor of a leap off the stairs at the end of episode eight – there was no certainty she would survive since Silo has happily despatched all kinds of characters to fates definitive … and tantalisingly not but you kind of hoped – start finding out the world they thought they knew is built on lies and buttressed by fabricated reality, then all bets are off.
Because once questions start getting asked and some answers get provided – Juliette finds the message from her dearly loved partner George (Ferdinand Kingsley) on the hard drive thanks to help from dissidents in the I.T. department and it reveals that everything you thought was real is NOT i.e. there is an OUTSIDE and it’s LOVELY! – you can put the revelatory genie back in the bottle.
It’s out and one answer or act of rebellion at a time, the truth will out and people will discover that while power can be wielded by the likes of interim mayor and puppet master Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins) who is actually the one person who can ruin the life of Judicial bully Robert Sims (Common), it can also be DEFIED, and that is what starts happening in this thrilling episode.
The crucial thing at play here is that Juliette keeps defying over and over and over again.
There are a number of key points where she should just give up – injured when leaping off the stairs? Not a bad time to just stop … almost caught in Sims’ apartment accessing the hard drive while holding his wife and kid hostage? Also understandable if you pulled the plug here … etc etc – but Juliette is impelled by a need to know the truth, to know why George was killed (his declaration of love for her is bittersweet beautiful) and to do something about it.
There are plenty of people in autocratic systems who could do something but don’t to keep the peace, and god knows Silo has its fair share of them including one guy who lets Holland bully him into acquiescence, but Juliette is not going to be one of them.
She is driven by the need for truth and the emotions rolling off as she works tirelessly to chip away and find out what the hard drive contains and why Judicial do not want its files to see the light of day are immensely moving and point to why she’s willing to do whatever it takes to chip away at the edifice of dictatorship.
Silo‘s true strength all along has been its ability to advance its story by startlingly affecting degrees while retaining a brooding sense of a system in decline and showing what aggrieved people, with nothing left to lose, will do to avenge the loss of someone they love.
But also, and this is critical to what drives this show, how much we all crave truth; we might accept white lies and propagandistic half-truths to paper over the nagging sense of disquiet we feel about being alive but deep down, we want to know the truth, we want freedom and we need authentic connection, and all those undeniable impulses are driving Juliette, those who aid her and the show itself.
In the end what Juliette and IT guy Patrick (Rick Gomez) and his hacker buddy witness is truth that outright proves the establishment of the Silo are lying and that all the terrible things they have done are not for the good of the people but merely to preserve and burnish their own power.
It’s reprehensibly criminal what they have done and are doing, denying people the chance to be free and to live lives of their choosing and the true gravity of what they have done will likely become clear in the final episode for the season which I suspect will bust things wide open and show that when you speak truth to power, power will always win … eventually.
Silo is currently streaming on Apple TV+
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (S2, E2)
If there’s one thing that Star Trek, in all its many TV, film and streaming iterations has always done well, its wearing its avowedly humanistic heart on its sleeve without once feeling ever slightly cheesy.
In fact, where we should be wincing at the sheer sincerity of sentiments expressed, because they are usually as earnest as they come, we are instead buoyed with the idea that in this sh*tshow of a world where justice evades us and fairness often falls victim to competing priorities, that somewhere in the future we finally get our collective stiff together.
In fact, so well do we execute on our promise for supping consistently with the better angels of our nature that someone like Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn), who as a member of a persecuted genetically-modified humanoid race known as the Illyrians should hate everything the Federation stands for, willingly signs up to serve in Starfleet.
She does so, because while, freakout by the centuries-old ruination of the Eugenic Wars which has led to draconian Federation laws against genetic tampering so strict that no one gets a mercy pass, least of all a decorated Starfleet officer, she is inspired at the age of six by the idea of people from all kinds of planets, beliefs and backgrounds working together for the common good.
While the planet she lives on in the Vaultera Nebula has been treated with bigotry and prejudice, driven by entrenched fear of the darkness of dystopian genetic powerplays, she sees in a visiting starship crew what can happen when fear is set aside and hope and trust in a better future takes root instead.
How do we know she feels this deeply?
Because in episode 2, “Ad Astra per Aspera”, we witness a classic Star trek courtroom scene in which Una, decorated 25-year veteran of Starfleet and trusted Number One to Captain Pike (Anson Mount), who is almost dragged down with her, has to bare her soul, thanks to her friend and counsel Neera Ketoul (Yetide Badaki), to save her career and in many ways, her life.
You may recall that Una was arrested at the end of season one for lying on her application to Starfleet that she was not genetically modified, nope, not even a little bit.
Turns out she was; so badly did she want to live out Federation ideals and the hope she saw in a diverse community when she was a little girl, that she was willing to lie outright to be a part of this grand glorious vision.
Setting aside fighting for what is right, and forcing the Federation to reconsider their antipathy to anyone even slightly genetically augmented – her decision to hide her true self caused a rift with Neera that, happily, is worked through too in this gripping episode – she disappeared into a genetic closet, one which was exposed (how is incredibly fascinating and moving and best left to spoiler-free watching) and now has forced to argue, via Neera, for her very right to exist.
It’s this fight for authenticity and truth that informs the heart and soul of “Ad Astra per Aspera”, which occupies a delicious grey area where all the good things about the Federation are exposed as slightly hypocritical when they are pushed out of sight to satisfy an impelling need to uphold a particular set of belief.
It exposes once again that the Federation ins’t perfect but rather that it’s trying to be, and that sometimes you need to challenge ruinous inconsistencies in the even the best of systems if they are truly to live up to their potential and encompass everyone in their multiplicity of difference and not simply those who neatly fit the prevailing narrative.
In taking on this fight, Una, and Neera, who argues powerfully and with great, arrestingly watchable conviction, are simply asking the Federation to be fully true to what it claims to believe, and not just pay lip service to it.
Granted things are resolved on a technicality and the outcome is not the clanging blow for truth and justice that Una etc might want but it’s a start as Neera observes when she remarks, with not a little wonder, that watching a crew so devoted to their technically illegal Number One means there is hope for greater, more transformative victories in the future.
One thing is for sure, in “Ad Astra per Aspera”, Star Trek once again winningly wears its heart very much on its sleeve, and proves that lofty sentiment and fertile sincerity don’t have to be cheesy but can be moving and buoyant and leave the real world looking a little more hopeful than they did before we watched the episode.
This is one of those banner episodes that reminds why we watched any show in this franchise, and while it might seem treacly or twee to some, the truth is that sentiment this rich and true and loftily preached is a shot in the arm to everyone, especially in an age when sincerity is often mocked, and devotion is often mocked, and all we want is to truly believe in something that matters and makes better people.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is currently screening on Paramount+