Sometimes there’s a moment when the writer gives the audience a conspiratorial knowing wink.  That moment came when they named this episode “Half Dense Players.”  Kenneth and Eugene discuss.

Episode Synopsis

Darius arrives at Clarke Station, in Jupiter space.  An event of interest to the Orchard has happened.  That event is a death.

As Darius says, “This incident suggests a catastrophic intersection of multi-dimensional space and time.  The subject might have crossed the intersection by accident. A dimensional event hitting a multiple-hyper-dimensional left field.”  An explanation so unconvincing that even the actor appeared not to believe what he was trying to sell.

Another individual is implicated, Andrea Arquette – not just any Andrea Arquette, THE Andrea Arquette, “Bitch Goddess of Pretentious Wankers Everywhere,” and former squeeze of Billy Tsunami, a woman so incredibly beautiful, it could turn a hardened bounty hunter’s head, or so Rudolfo warns Dante.

Things are tense aboard the Trans-Utopian, in the last episode, for some reason I’ve completely forgotten, Dante threw a fit and fired Lucretia.  In this episode, Rudolfo is reminding Dante that he’s just the hired help, too, and Lucretia IS NOT fired, so deal with it.  Dante doesn’t like this but, he knows where the cards fall.  Percy likes it even less, but who cares what Percy thinks?

They’ve got a new assignment and they’d best be getting on with it.  They are to pick up a murder suspect, the aforementioned Andrea Arquette, and escort her to Ganymede, “for questioning.”  Darius contacts Lucretia (reminder: Lucretia is Darius’ daughter) and lets her know that he arranged for he un-firing, and also that this is an Orchard mission.  After escorting Arquette to Ganymede, an Orchard-controlled ship will take possession of her.

She warns her father that Dante will be suspicious, although it’s completely unclear why a man paid to transport prisoners from one place to another would be suspicious of delivering his prisoner to the place he was paid to take her.

While Dante and Lucretia collect the prisoner, Percy discovers a mysterious ion trail orbiting the Clarke Station.  It doesn’t show up on any of the instruments except the diagnostic scanners.  She has a feeling about this and forces Caravaggio to investigate far beyond his threshold for patience.  

It’s incredibly fascinating to her, but she abandons it instantly when Arquette comes onboard, and, through no plausible way I can discern, takes the murder suspect off Dante and Lucretia’s hands and sets her up in the guest quarters instead of the cells… and they let that happen.

It’s just possible the beauty of this woman has turned a hardened bounty hunter’s head.

Now that Percy is done disobeying orders and setting up Arquette in the guest quarters she returns to the bridge, which was left unattended, and disobeys orders some more by telling Dante she’ll get around to leaving the station later after she’s done studying this fascinating ion trail some more.

Faced with insurrection, Dante’s course of action is clear:  He leaves the bridge and takes food to the prisoner.

Percy apparently gets around to heading towards Ganymede, because once they leave, the ion trail is following them.  Dante returns to the bridge and Percy tells him about it.  “No military stealth technology is that good,” he says and so he decides to ignore it and leaves the bridge and heads back to pick up the prisoner’s food and have a little chat.

In Dante’s absence, Percy launches a probe to investigate the ion trail.

Lucretia comes to the bridge, Percy tells her about the ion trail and the findings from her probe.  There’s a spaceship out there and it’s 3 million years old.  Lucretia, as head of security, takes this information a lot more seriously than Dante.  Well, we can only assume she takes it more seriously than Dante because they can’t tell Dante.  He’s engaged Maximum Privacy Mode while chatting with the prisoner.

Faced with an absent captain and a potentially serious problem, Lucretia’s course of action is clear:  She leaves the bridge to call daddy.  

Dante meanwhile is hearing Arquette’s story.  She’s been obsessed with Jupiter’s red spot and then she started loosing time and other mysterious things, culminating with her friend being chopped to pieces when he intersected with “…a multiple-hyper-dimensional left field.”

Meanwhile, the probe is destroyed, and space bolas are launched towards the Trans-Utopian.  

OK, time to override Dante’s DND sign and let him know of the imminent peril.  The bolas cause the ships systems to fail, and plummet blindly, probably towards a collision with a planet or something.  Looks like they may have to abandon ship!  I’ll go save the prisoner! Says Dante, once again leaving the bridge.  Lucretia also leaves to go call daddy again.  He says get off the ship – just you and the prisoner.  The others can die.  To her credit, Lucretia says, “no,” to this, and proceeds to try to find a way off for everyone.

The Bolas have found Arquette, and she has found them, as they go for a multi-dimensional stroll around the ship.  Dante finds her and sees the lights, and something he cannot explain.  He takes her back to the bridge.

Percy is once again disobeying her orders to prepare to abandon ship and is, to her credit, working out a way to save the ship.  With everyone back on the bridge, a voice of possession comes from Arquette.  “We see all of time from beginning to end, blah blah blah.  You simple creatures are too primitive to understand.  We bring you the gift of becoming gods like us, yada yada yada.”

Dante knows what to do:  He tries to hug the divinity out of Arquette.  It doesn’t work and this time Arquette leaves the bridge, by disappearing.

Now they are met with one of those mysterious ships that saved their butts previously, and the cat’s out of the bag.  Yes, that’s the Orchard, yes Lucretia works for them, yes, she’s “fired” again, but before she goes, she knows that they know too much and the Orchard will kill them.

And for some reason, she doesn’t want that to happen, so she blackmails her father by threatening to broadcast everything about the incident to everyone if they don’t stand down.  Which they do.

All this leaves Dante singing the song, “How do you solve a problem like Maria, er… um… Lucretia?”  For once, instead of shouting, pouting, screaming or playing a petulant silent child, he tries a new technique.  He goes to talk to her.

Also, the director of the episode fulfills a life-long desire to film a scene with a camera mounted on a lazy-suzan.  That’s art that is.