Summary
A return to Earth in “Gift from the Gods” gives Another Life some welcome, and more grounded, focus.
This recap of Another Life season 2, episode 6, “Gift from the Gods”, contains spoilers.
You should never look a gift horse in the mouth, or so the saying goes, but I suppose it doesn’t count if you’re Trojan. Nevertheless, it’s a sentiment that Erik chooses to ignore in “Gift from the Gods”, which is probably for the best scientifically speaking. The orb gifted to mankind by the Achaia is supposedly a healing trinket, proof of their peaceful intentions. But you can’t just take that at face value. So, Erik heads to an abandoned area and allows the gizmo to change and heal it; to rebuild it as a utopia. It seems like the Achaia are telling the truth. And that has some ripple effects of its own.
Another Life season 2, episode 6 recap
Following the bisecting of the Salvare in the previous episode, Richard and Niko might have been left behind, but Cas and the others are back on Earth – or near Earth, anyway. Their emergence through the wormhole causes some fuss, and Erik’s experiments are being talked about over the airwaves, so in this way, Cas is able to catch wind and wonder, not unreasonably, whether the crew will be welcomed back to Earth given how they have interacted with the Achaia thus far. This, for once, is a pretty compelling dynamic.
Less compelling is everything going on with Iara. I made fun of her as soon as she was introduced, since there’s very little more ill-fated in science-fiction than sentient technology, especially when it’s at war with itself. But I suppose it’s part of a burgeoning theme, the idea of warring impulses conflicting in the same vessel. You see it with Seth and Harper Glass and their Achaian implants, a means by which they can be controlled by parties outside themselves. That’s basically the same thing as what’s going on with Iara; potentially incompatible natures. On a larger scale, it works as a metaphor for colonization, humanity trying to impose their way of life on cultures they don’t understand. It’s Paula landing on a random planet in this case; it has been various, much more local examples throughout history in the real world.
With all this in mind, it makes sense that Cas decides to keep what they know about the Achaians to themselves. It makes sense, too, that the Salvare crew are immediately isolated; they can’t, after all, be allowed to interfere with the wider plans of people like Seth, who evidently has designs of his own. Erik remains an outlier since he’s concerned, primarily, with reuniting with Niko. Love compels him to go against the grain, to have more in common with the resistance than the establishment. It also makes him a target of Seth, who uses him to locate the base of the resistance movement, commit atrocities, and extract information using his strange alien implement. How very human of him.
Bringing Another Life back down to Earth benefits it. It’s still silly, but it’s less flagrantly ridiculous, which is an improvement. Having left bizarre people and ideas like Paula behind, even if it’s only temporarily, concentrates more focus on understandable points of view. Cas, in particular, is enjoying a decent character arc, her calculated actions here a far cry from the rash ones at the beginning of the season. It might not necessarily be sustained, but it’s a nice change of pace to see ostensibly smart people behave in a mostly smart way.
You can stream Another Life season 2, episode 6, “Gift from the Gods”, exclusively on Netflix.
