Legends of Tomorrow, “Marooned” recap

4 Mar

Welcome back! When we last left the team, they took a unscheduled stop in 2046 Star City, and it was not a pleasant place to visit. But Heatwave felt right at home, which made Cold knocking him out and taking him back onto the mission to stop Vandal Savage a particularly nasty wedge between the thieves. So, how is that going to bear out for the team as they continue their mission?

What You Give Up. Let’s get to the Rip Hunter flashback up front, where he’s a Time Master in training with his colleague/future wife Miranda. They’re running a simulation on repelling time pirates from a time ship, and she comes up with the inventive idea of venting the pirates into space (something to note for later). It looks like both cadets are quality Time Master material, until their trainer catches them fraternizing romantically, which is big Time Master no-no. Both of them look like they’re a out to be drummed out when Rip hears Miranda has taken full responsibility for this and gets drummed out of Time Masters University, or wherever. He asks her why she would do that as she is the better of them both, and she answers she did it out of love for the longing to be a Time Master Rip. Awww.

Down Time. So back to now (or whenever), as Rip has been spending the last week trying to find leads on Vandal Savage (and watching an old holo message from his wife and son), and has come up with nothing. The rest of the team is left waiting in the Waverider too, with ol’ Heatwave still upset about what happened in future Star City. Rip knows can get updates for Gideon to track down leads on Savage from the Vanishing Point, the Time Masters HQ, but due to his current fugitive status, that’s a no-go. But what luck, Gideon receives a distress call from a fellow time ship, the Acheron, and Rip thinks they can get the update from that ship’s computer. The thing is, the ship not stuck in time…but in deep space! No probs for future time ships as we learn, and off they go!

“Time to do my best Frank Poole from 2001: A Space Odyssey impersonation!”

S.O.T.S. (Save Our Time Ship). The Waverider arrives at the signal’s location to find the Acheron adrift, and Rip leaves Ray in charge while he takes a boarding party of Stein, Jax, and a eager Heatwave over in the dropship. Stein gets left in the dropship (but hey, the man’s just happy to be in outer space, anyways!) as the rest of the boarding team make their way to the Acheron’s bridge. And the team discovers its a trap as armed men take them prisoner. The leader is Jon Valor, who Rip recognizes as a famous space pirate. That’s right, we’re dealing with space pirates!

Space Pirates! Valor had suspected another time ship would arrive to answer the Acheron’s distress call, and waited for that rescue ship, mostly because he wants a time ship with a time drive, and the captain of the Acheron, Baxter, destroyed theirs when the pirates took over. So Valor contacts, ahem, Captain Ray Palmer of the Waverider, to ask for his surrender. Rip mentions something about “Imperiex” to Ray, and Gideon recognizes as a code word that Rip programmed in as a signal to run. The Waverider flees, with the Acheron in hot pursuit. A missile hit from the Acheron punctures the hull, and Sara and Cold head down to plug it up, but end up being caught in the room with the breach, with the hole barely sealed, but causing the room to slowly freeze over.

Um, by the way, what happened to Stein?

Valor: “I’m looking for Kara Thrace.” Rory: “We got a blonde that came back from the dead. Close enough for you?”

Harold Stein, Space Ranger. Well, Stein hears from Gideon about what’s going on, and decides to move on his own. He manages to get to the weapons systems on the Acheron and disable them, ending the chase as Rip manages to give one more coded order to lock out the time drive. So the boarding team is dumped into a holding cell, which already holds Captain Baxter, while the pirates search for Stein. Baxter is not too happy to be locked in with a traitor to the Time Masters, and as he explains, he’s doing this to save his family from Savage. Let’s see how that explanation pans out.

Meanwhile, Sara and Cold talk about Heatwave being all prickly, and Cold talks about how Heatwave/Rory was there for him, saving him from bullies when he got sent to juvie (no way is that story ominous…). As that is going on, Ray has modified his suit so he can go outside and deal the hull breach. He succeeds, just before his oxygen dies out and he collapses in the docking bay. Kendra manages to revive Ray, and what seems like a nice bonding moment gets interrupted by Cold and Sara, finally out of the sealed room. They get signaled that Heatwave escaped and is using the dropship to return to the Waverider. How did that happen, you ask? And why is Cold’s assurance Heatwave is still on their side horribly wrong?

Parlay. Let’s backtrack a bit, as tensions in the holding cell get bad enough that Heatwave starts blaming Rip for turning his partner against him. And then it finally comes out: Rip NEVER wanted Heatwave as part of this mission, but was part of a package deal to get Cold! OUCH. So thanks to Rip letting that angry statement of fact out, Heatwave calls to see Valor alone, and offers to give them the Waverider if he’s dropped off back in 2016 Central City. After a brief beating from Valor (you know, to convince his “friends”), Heatwave heads back to the Waverider. But when Cold and company come to greet him, Heatwave reveals the space pirates he’s brought with him! So much for being brothers, Cold.

Boarding Party. At the Acheron, Stein shows up and breaks our team and Baxter out. Rip has a plan, and one that should sound familiar to us watching this episode. He makes it to the control and beats down Valor just as the team is surrounded by the remaining space pirates onboard. Stein, Jax, and Baxter grab onto something locked in, because Rip orders the pressure doors near them opened! And while our heroes survive, a brief depressurizing sends the rest of the pirates into space!

Back on the Waverider, before you think Heatwave is about to pull some kind of last minute bluff to show he’s a hero…NOPE, he’s really trying to get to the ship’s time drive! While the team beats down the pirates, Sara gets into a fight with Heatwave, which ends with Cold knocking his former compatriot out. Heatwave asks what his old buddy’s going to do now with him, and its a big question to ask.

Instead of getting a rose, this episode of Space Bachelor ends with Rory getting Old Yeller-Ed.

The Big Burn. On the Acheron, Rip is about to leave when Baxter offers him a token of thanks: an update for Gideon, and a likely new time where Savage is discovered: 1958! Meanwhile, on the Waverider, Kendra shares a kiss with Ray, and so much for that talk of no need for relationships right now from her. But the team has a big problem in what to do with Heatwave. They can’t hold him in the ship forever, and returning him to his time would put all their friends and relatives in front of his wrath. So what to do?

Heatwave comes to in a forest, with Cold the only one there. The way it looks to Heatwave is if he’s gonna be rubbed out by his partner, and no amount of reasoning by Cold to focus on the mission is doing any good to fix things. So, Cold turns his cold gun on his longtime buddy and fires. But did Cold just “ice” his friend? Did the team agree to just kill one of their own? I guess those are questions to be answered next time!

–Comic book connections: Imperiex and Kanjar Ro are deep reaches into the DCU, and Valor feels like a reference to Valor, a Kryptonian hero from the 31st Century, albeit in name only.

–All the timeships have AI with names starting with “G”. Interesting. Also, Rip Hunter isn’t his real name, but a name to protect his loved ones from retaliation in the timeline, like all of the Time Masters.

–Someone on the writing staff did proper research on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Also, Kendra’s a TNG fan?

–Stein failed at being an astronaut because of his nearsightedness. Or smoking pot. Probably the latter.

–Stein just takes one of the pirates’ berets for himself, just because.

–“…You have the IQ of meat!”

–“I was recruited for my ability to set things on fire, and now I’m stuck on the one place I can’t set things on fire: a spaceship!”

–“You look like a man who would throw his grandmother out of an airlock.”

–“You’re not Captain Kirk. You’re Picard.”

That’s it for now, but come back next week for the recap of “Night of the Hawk”…