New Arcadia Recap: s01e02 "You've Got Mail"

The arbitrary time designated as morning on New Arcadia, and we watch our crew wake up. Ophelia is up and at it as soon as her alarm goes off. She has a post-it stuck to the ceiling above her bunk, and she touches it, but we still don’t see what it says. We cut to Echo, who is fixated on her tablet the whole time she’s dressing and brushing her teeth. Then we cut to Ves, who is woken up by Alpha Juliet, and instructs them to “snooze” repeatedly until AJ refuses to stop talking and Ves gives in and gets up. All our crew members end up at a very awkward breakfast. Ves is half-asleep, Echo is focused on the tablet, and Ophelia keeps trying to make conversation that only AJ responds to.

Echo eventually groans and sets the tablet aside. She tells the others that the communications are extremely backed up; she keeps routing messages and then finding out that they’re from months ago. That’s the problem with being the new staff on a formerly-derelict relay station, Ves says: everything’s out of date. They all talk around the reason why the station was derelict. Ophelia offers to help Echo go through the messages. Ophelia looks meaningfully at Ves, trying to get him to offer to help, but they don’t take the hint. When she makes it less of a hint, he tells them there’s still too much to repair. AJ verifies this: Ves is still patching up a LOT of stuff that was supposed to be under maintenance.

Echo and Ophelia go through the messages together. Echo is working silently, but Ophelia keeps trying to start a conversation. After a lot of one-word responses, Ophelia says: it’s going to be hard to live out here on this station away from everybody else if we don’t get to know each other. Echo looks at her and says, sometimes it’s easier not to know people. Then it doesn’t hurt when things go wrong. Ophelia remembers Mitchell, and disagrees: she’s glad she knew him, even though he’s gone now. And she regrets that the others didn’t get the chance to know him like she did. Echo hesitates, then answers Ophelia’s last question, and they begin a real conversation.

Ves, meanwhile, has gone to try and repair pieces of the ship. Starting with the climate control, which is pretty wonky. AJ is giving...not incredibly good directions. When Ves points this out, AJ defensively tells them that they're sleepy! They were asleep for a while before the shuttle came in and woke them up. And Ves, who has a hard time getting up in the morning, should understand. Ves asks how long it was, but AJ doesn't know. Is it weird, to just have long periods of blank? No, it was just like sleeping.

Meanwhile, Echo and Ophelia's conversation is interrupted by a new message coming in for immediate response. Echo raises it, and it’s a very angry person, claiming that they sent a claim on an asteroid site for their colony, but someone else is also there, pretending it’s theirs! Echo tries to get information from them, but another message comes in. Ophelia takes this one: the other people, who also say they sent a claim. Uh oh.

Echo and Ophelia both promise to check the records and get back to them. They do find the claims. Both claims. With New Arcadia being down, neither was routed through to the central database, so both were filed and neither was informed there was a conflict.

Technically, neither of them went through to the registry, so neither has a claim…and the claim belongs to whichever message New Arcadia routes through first. Ophelia has AJ ping Ves for help. Ves can check the time stamps and figure out whose claim would have gone through first if New Arcadia had been functioning. Then they’ll send that one through, which is only fair. Echo, meanwhile, is doing research on both colonies. One of them is fairly large and successful: well-situated to trade routes and additional resources. The other one is much more distant. Ves reports that the larger colony actually filed later, but since they’re much closer, their claim would have arrived first. If New Arcadia had been functioning properly, they’d have the asteroid site.

Echo argues that they have an opportunity to do a lot of good by sending the smaller colony’s claim through. The larger colony doesn’t need the asteroid site, but the little one might—and they DID claim it first, even if their position meant it wouldn’t have mattered under other circumstances. Ves shrugs, and tells Ophelia it’s her call. “My call?” Ophelia is surprised. Well, yeah, Ves says. She’s in charge.

Ophelia thinks about it. We flash back to her and Mitchell in training. She never expected to be mission commander; while she scored well on aptitude tests, she always lacked the confidence. She was really glad to be assigned as Mitchell’s second, because she trusted him to do the right thing. When he received command, he tells her that she could have had it too: she just needs to trust herself.

She tells them to send through the claim for the smaller colony. Ves does so, and Echo calls both the colonies to give them the result. The representative from the smaller colony is clearly relieved; the larger colony politely and coldly signs off. Once they’re gone, the smaller colony rep admits that they were terrified they wouldn’t get it—messages pass so slowly from where they are. Echo tells them that they should always route through New Arcadia, and they’ll expedite it. She tells them she’s glad they’re there.

With the call ended, Ophelia tells them all she’s glad they’re there, too. That something like this is really hard, but much harder without a team. Ves checks with AJ that other repairs can wait, and joins them in going through the messages. Echo, a little hesitantly, asks them both about their families, and we fade out on the team beginning to get to know each other.

Next week: s01e02 "You've Got Mail"

From the TV Guide: New Arcadia s01e02 "You’ve Got Mail"

Echo and the crew try to work through the years-long backlog of delayed messages and end up at the center of a misunderstanding between two space colonies. Ophelia tries to get the crew to bond.

New Arcadia Recap: s01e01 "Pilot"

A shuttle arrives at a silent space station. It docks by itself, and a mechanical voice transfers control to the space station computer, Alpha Juliet. Four cryopods are unloaded and defrosted; as they come out, Alpha Juliet scans them and logs their permissions. Ophelia Singh (she/her) is second-in-command and navigation specialist. Echo Cardoza (she/they) is the communications specialist. Ves Park (he/they) is the engineering specialist. When they try to unload the last pod, there’s an issue—no vital signs. The cryopod failed, and Mission Commander Mitchell (he/him) is dead.

Ophelia wakes to Alpha Juliet providing her new credentials. “Mission Commander Singh, command of New Arcadia has been transferred to you.” She stumbles up out of the pod and over to Mitchell’s, hitting the buttons, trying to get it to wake up. Nothing happens; he’s dead. While she’s doing this, the other two wake up.  Alpha Juliet greets them all, introduces themselves as the station computer, and then reports: the station systems are only fourteen percent online.

“Which fourteen percent?” Ves asks. Not the right fourteen percent. Ophelia sends Ves to repair life support and Echo to bring communications online. She heads to the command center. What about Commander Mitchell? He’s already dead; the priority is to keep the rest of them alive. He remains in his cryo-coffin.

At the comms station, Echo starts initiation procedures. They linger over the damage to the ship—odd damage, like pieces of it have been deliberately ripped out. They slowly put it together, bringing it back online, reporting the damage to Ophelia. Ophelia asks them if something’s wrong, but they hesitate and say no: it’s all normal disrepair, nothing to worry about. Echo appears to be hiding something.

Repairing the life support system, Ves chats with Alpha Juliet. He asks if he can call them AJ. AJ agrees. Ves queries AJ about the station; AJ reports that they’ve always been the computer at the station, but Ves doesn’t think that’s right—AJ asks who would know, AJ or Ves? Well, AJ, but that’s not what Ves was told.

At the command center, Ophelia activates all the computers with her status as Commander. We flash back to before the mission. We see Ophelia and Mitchell in training together, complaining about working opposite shifts. Mitchell says he’ll leave Ophelia notes so that it’s like they’re working together. We watch a succession of post-it notes stuck to pillows—“you’ll do great”, “don’t forget to get your laundry”, etc. Then we get to Ophelia and Mitchell are performing final checks. They’re both nervous, but joking about it. As Ophelia gets in her cryopod, Mitchell sticks a post-it note in with her, tells her it will keep her company while he’s not there. Back in the present, Ophelia brings the computers fully online.

Ves asks AJ to access prior activation records. AJ tries, but can’t find them for a minute. Bad file organization...oh, there they are. Suddenly, the life support system starts crashing. Ves can’t figure out what is wrong. He realizes AJ’s attempted memory retrieval triggered the meltdown. Someone REALLY doesn’t want them to know what happened before.

Ophelia and Echo come running. Ves asks Ophelia’s permission to wipe the prior records. There’s some kind of virus in there, Ves thinks. They apologize to AJ—they’re kind of their memories. AJ says it’s fine. Ophelia hesitates, but Echo pushes hard for it; they need to stay alive now. Who cares about the past? Ophelia agrees. Ves wipes the records, and the life support system comes fully online.

Back in the landing bay, they regard Mitchell’s cryopod. They could launch him into space, an astronaut’s funeral, but Ophelia rejects that; his family will want the body. They end up moving it to a storage area and covering up his frozen face. Ophelia lingers at the pod.

While Ves and Echo go to the galley and AJ offers them a selection of rations for dinner, Ophelia goes back to her pod and retrieves Mitchell’s last post-it note. We don’t see what it says, but when she reads it, she sits down against the wall and starts to cry.