Another Life season 1, episode 3 recap: Nervous Breakdown

The crew of the Salvare are infected by a virus in the third episode of Another Life. Will they find a cure before they destroy each other?

After the Salvare landed on an alien planet in the previous episode of Another Life, crewmember Petra started having uncontrollable fits that no one could stop. In the latest episode, Niko and her crew quarantine Petra, but she starts pleading with them to eject her from the ship.

Unhappy Partnerships

When Harper Glass gets a lead, she’s unwilling to let it go. She wants as much information as she can get about the Salvare, and now that she’s released dubious claims that the Salvare has been destroyed, she’s hoping she has Dubois and Erik in a vice.

Erik won’t give in to Harper’s haranguing, but he’s making no headway with his recent breakthrough with the Artifact either. The scenes with Erik are actually really boring because they seem to be playing on loop and they halt the pace of each episode.

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Despite his hatred for Harper’s platform, Erik realizes that her 250 million followers could come in handy for something. He hands her the data he has accumulated and his team’s hypotheses for cracking the Artifact’s code. Perhaps one of Harper’s followers can crack it.

Falling Dominoes

Niko refuses to comply with Petra’s demands to kill her, but the entire ship is on edge. They’re lost, with no way to contact Earth, and now have no clue what’s wrong with their colleague. It doesn’t help that Michelle will pick a fight with just about anyone, instead of actually helping fix any of the ship systems.

William suggests the Salvare use Sirius A as an axis point to get back on course – a good plan, except that the ship gets caught in an Oort Cloud and gets bombarded by icy comets. Niko attempts to pilot the ship through the field, but suddenly she loses her sight and tells Cas to take over.

When Zayn examines Niko, they discover that Niko’s hormone levels are off the charts, just like Petra’s. Since this is out of Zayn’s field of expertise, it’s time for the crew to wake up the resident astro-biologist. Julian Page (Edward Ruttle) isn’t even out of his capsule before he surmises the cause of the problem – boron-based soil samples that Bernie brought aboard the ship. Boron provides ‘the basic building block of life’, which means those samples could have created something that’s affecting the crew.

It’s interesting that most of the male crew are seen fully clothed or covered when they wake up from Soma sleep, but almost all the majority of the female crew spent a sizeable amount of their introductions in sports bras. Niko and Cas had full on conversations in them. Why the dichotomy in a science-fiction show in 2019?

Finding a Cure

While Niko tries to while away the time, she is attacked by Michelle. Michelle is hell-bent on killing Niko, but is bested by Niko’s expert athleticism. And no, Michelle isn’t just being the colleague from hell, she’s also been infected.

Julian has isolated the virus causing the problems by examining the blood of patient zero – Bernie. Despite not showing any symptoms, Bernie’s carried this virus on board and infected everyone else. But there’s no need to panic, apparently, because the next thing we know the crew are enjoying a meal together and Petra believes she’s cured. Niko hasn’t got her sight back, but Zayn and Julian think it’s only a matter of time.

Of course, they’ve celebrated too soon. Petra’s spine crawls out of her neck, killing her. With no hope in sight, Niko orders decontamination of the ship. The contaminated air will be purged and disinfected and the current crew will be ejected. With only one hour left before their deaths, Bernie and Julian decide to make a last-ditch effort to save the crew.

Since Bernie is immune to the virus, Julian concocts a new formula which he injects Bernie with. Initial scans show the formula is working, so Julian tries it on himself, and of course, it speeds up the virus’ effects. Wow, this crew is really dumb sometimes. Fearing the same fate as Petra, Julian orders Bernie to eject him through the airlock – it takes some convincing but Bernie follows through.

Now there are no other options, but Bernie refuses to give up. Thankfully William arrives and Bernie suddenly finds a cure. The crew and the ship need to be blasted by some gamma radiation to purge the virus. It’s a painful process but it gets the job done.

Good news comes with bad news, though – since the crew were hit by radiation, they’ve all been sterilized. Some people are upset, others are grateful to be alive. But finally, the ship is back on course and the crew return to Soma sleep.

If Niko was enjoying some sweet dreams, she wakes up to a nightmare in the closing moments of this Another Life episode. Niko gets out of her capsule to find a blood covered crewmember. Someone is hunting them onboard the ship.

What did you think of this episode of Another Life? Let us know in the comments!