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.