The Tomorrow People - Episode 5 - Recap - All Tomorrow's Parties
The Tomorrow People - Episode 5 - Recap - All Tomorrow's Parties
The CW keeps up with its Wednesday night block of superhero drama with a new episode of The Tomorrow People. In case you've forgotten, these not-quite-The-X-Men teenagers all have three powers: Telekinesis, telepathy, and teleportation. They can't kill (except John) and live underground in a subway station. Stephen is our main character. His dad was a big shot with The tomorrow People, and Stephen himself has a secret new power: Stopping time. Stephen's dad was some kind of messiah and Stephen's uncle is a jerk who works for Ultra (they hunt Tomorrow People). Stephen interns for him, but is secretly a double agent!
Stephen's on an op for Ultra when things go south. Then, it turns out to been a training exercise. Stephen is chastised by Uncle Supervillain, his boss/uncle Jedikiah. Stephen's got to do better. Before he goes back, Cara has a mission for Stephen: He's to watch the power-eliminating injection of an Ultra-captured Tomorrow Person. When he's in there, he steals a vial of the formula. Right after, Uncle Jedikiah tells Stephen the big bosses want to meet the young cadet. Stephen's led, hooded, to a big mystery mansion. In the house, a voice starts talking into Stephen's head. The voice invades Stephen's head, but Stephen isn't sure he was able to block the attack. I guess there's going to be more of this guy later in the season? I mean this scene was so brief and didn't have any kind of proper resolution.
Newcomer goth teen brat Kurt gets the second degree when The Tomorrow People find out he's been back to the surface to visit mommy. The argument provides a lot of exposition, mostly about Stephen's mission in Ultra and how Stephen's dad promised some kind of Tomorrow People paradise. The debate opens anyway, with one faction pushing to integrate with humanity and another pushing to separate. I'm a big comic book dude, so this is all very familiar to me. It's The X-Men. Professor X versus Magento. Specifically, there's a debate about taking a trip to a nightclub. Cara and John have a fight to decide who is right (yeah, more highly evolved, right); Cara wins. Everyone in the sewer goes to the party, but John stays behind angry. Everyone is even having a good time, except the lonely Cara. Then, John shows up anyhow! Once at the party, a few of the crew spot power dampeners and realize it's a trap. The doors lock and some Ultra agents start shooting everyone. John steals a gun during their escape and shoots an agent, revealing to Cara and a younger recruit his unique ability to kill. Stephen thinks the whole ambush was his fault, but Kurt admits to it. He says that Ultra claimed to just be after John, that they'd threatened his mom. Three of their own dead, Cara uses the power elimination formula Stephen stole earlier on Kurt.
Stephen finally apologizes to his erstwhile friend, Astrid. Now they're headed to a school dance, but she won't let up about the teleporting (she spotted him a few episodes back). She seems about set to let it be, but when she spies Stephen being taken away by Jedikiah, Astrid follows. She has to give up when she encounters an Ultra agent wondering why she's there. Inside, Stephen is led out on to a balcony overlooking... the big party The Tomorrow People crashed! After the big hubbub, Stephen admits that he needs to share his secret and teleports with Astrid.
Mom wasn't in this episode! Boooooo! But, the episode was otherwise solid. While I felt there could have been more done to justify how Ultra can get away with trying to murder a building filled with unarmed and innocent teenagers on American soil, the shock of it was effective. In fact, had this happened on a show with a budget high enough for nicer cinematography (not a knock on the show, that stuff just takes time and money that I'm sure The CW lacks), I'd be totally willing to forgive the messy logic of it between bouts of sobbing. It was an excellent, heavily emotional event, but was delivered without flair, like eating caviar on white bread. I will be interested, though, to see if the show gets into how the outside world would react if they found out a secret paramilitary group was herding teens into buildings to mow them down with machine guns. Maybe next week? Anyway, check out the preview below!