Afterlife 1x07 'Murder, Part I'

by Jon Nyqvist

After crash landing their newly stolen Airship, Jonathan, Aurora and their new allies find themselves deep in "dark" lands, surrounded by terrible creatures, and something worse...

After getting the season back up to the high standards of its opener at long last with the brilliant 'Escape,' it's back to the world of Afterlife in our first major arc episode, the first half of a two-parter that introduces the Big Bad and should also provide plenty more great Jonathan and Aurora moments. 'Escape' showed that this show is at its strongest when those two get the screen time they need to play off each other, so by those requisities the second half of the season should prove even better than the first. In theory.

Opening with a cool little shot of Aurora hiding the patch of darkness still festering away on her hand (and reminding us of that particular plotline in case any of you had forgotten), Jon arrives to lead her out onto the Reaver's main upper deck, pointing out the Evil Forest currently heading towards them. Or, rather, the airship is heading towards the forest in a distinctly crash-beckoning direction. Kate stumbles out onto deck, clinging to Jon in true damsel style as Aurora points out that crashing isn't the problem - a stray spark igniting the very flammable bag of gas over their heads is. Kate takes a moment to throw some more abuse Aurora's way, which leads to Aurora grabbing her and making it pretty clear she'll cut her throat if she tries anything like that again. Jon lays Aurora out and gets ready to throw her off the ship, but as Aurora comes to her senses it seems she wasn't in control of her action - she has Evil Hand Issues. Lindsey McDonald would sympathise! Jon knows something's up but also knows they'll have to deal with that later - gathering the others up on the deck (and with a neat angle showing Aurora sticking to the shadows where she feels she belongs), he outlines his plan. Jump. The Reaver starts to cleave its way through the dead trees, and the crew make a leap for freedom, smashing their way to the ground as the airship finally goes up in flames - and highlighting hundreds of evil creatures of darkness waiting out in the wilds! Uh oh...

Jon stumbles into frame, following Kate's cries of alarm to find her hanging up in a tree. There's a few quips (naturally), before a quick climb and a heroic grab has the two of them on more solid ground, and as they climb to the floor we follow them as they search for the others. With sinister shadows tracking the two as they move through the eerily silent forest of dead trees, they locate Marius and Vergil, battered but alive, and as Kate sighs with relief Jon notes darkly that Aurora is nowhere to be seen. Jon takes off in the direction of her likely crash site, finding a clearing and a handy bolt of lightning to point out blood on the rocks around him. He calls out for her, but the sudden arrival of more beasties has Jon running for his life, gathering the others in a nice moment of brevity as legions of the creatures of darkness race after him. Jon performs this week's John Woo Moment with a slow-mo drop kick on one of the pursuing creatures, but this splits him up from the others. They arrive at the crash site and use the burning Reaver wreckage to keep the creatures away - but where's Jonathan?

Meanwhile... Aurora wakes up in a black room, on black sheets and wearing a figure-hugging black dress. Symbolism aside, she's woken by a mysterious voice and springs to action, but before she can react she's grabbed by this season's Big Bad - the Lord of Murder. A suitably minimal description of the guy gives us just enough detail to build up our own impression of him, and as he holds the captive Aurora we switch back to the crash site. Kate tends to Vergil, clinging to life by a thread, before being startled by something bursting through the flames - but it's Jon. Whew! Dissolving to later on that night, Diana makes an appearance as Jon sits and muses on Aurora's fate. After making the valid point that despite his anger with her, Jon genuinely cares about Aurora, Aurora herself is being led through a hallway filled with living, hellish paintings by Murder. There's a cool, nightmarish quality to this whole location, well realised and making for a good villain's lair, so kudos to Nyqvist for creating such a distinctive location for his Big Bad to prowl around in. The paintings take on a more sinister quality when Aurora sees a younger version of herself, taking out her first mark, and Murder hints that every act of murder creates another one of the creatures running around the forest outside, one of which is close enough even now to grab Aurora! Murder starts to choke Aurora, angry that she never fulfilled her potential, and prepares to stab her when a new player emerges, stopping Murder from killing herbut treating her to a worse punishment instead - a kiss. This kiss unleashes hundreds of intense visions of atrocity on Aurora's mind, leaving her screaming in agony as we nip back to the crash site. Jon's getting ready to trek out in search of Aurora, much to Kate's horror, but with his dying breath Vergil tells Jon it's his purpose to find her, and then that's it. Game over. Well, he didn't do so bad considering how badly he was banged up, and while the moment of his death is pretty underplayed, it does its job of instilling a little more fire in Jonathan's heart as he sets off to find his woman. There's a cool Pitch Black moment as he grabs a torch and races through the sea of beasties outside the fire, parting the waves as he makes a run for it, and as he sprints into the night that's where we end the Act.

Jon is one step ahead of the creatures, and with a handy lesson in orienteering from Diana he's off on his way again, though not before we get the episode's jump-worthy moment as a creature leaps through her to get at him! Nyqvist always shows a director's sense of drama in his action sequences, throwing in some truly cool shots and moments throughout his scripts, and so far this episode is maintaining that standard! Jon finally arrives at Killers Sanctuary, lit up like a classic Gothic Castle o'Doom, and with the dark beasties hot on his trail he's quick to Spider-Man his way up the outside of the building, but with the vine he's using catching fire and a beastie advancing from above, things look pretty hairy for our plucky hero... In another inspired moment of action, Jon manages to kill the beast attacking him despite his boots being on fire, sending it to its death as he scrabbles in through a nearby window, quickly extinguishing himself. Whew! Jon finds Aurora waiting for him, slinky dress and all, but her seductive advances on him set his alarm bells ringing - what's she up to? As she slips out of the dress, however, Jon's in no position to listen to his inner voice, grabbing Aurora and giving her a darn good seeing to as we tastefully dissolve to the old 'post coital moment.' If only somebody had a cigarette. The duo clamber out of bed, their only way out up in smoke so Aurora aims him towards a door she spotted earlier. As they race off, we cut back to Kate and Marius just as the campfire starts to go out, and as they panic the army of creatures at the edges of their camp start to edge closer... Back with Jon and Aurora, they find the living portraits but are unaware that something is following them. Jon twigs that this all feels too easy, but as Aurora warns him not to jinx things by saying that - he jinxes things by saying that. The floor gives way and plunges them both into a a pit full of waist deep murky water, and as if the Star Wars moment wasn't obvious enough, we even get a 'Something just brushed up against my leg...' Eep! There's some kind of pit monster down there with them, grabbing Jon and pulling him under - but he's no wussy Skywalker kid, taking care of the thing in moments. While under, he found some kind of lever, and without giving much thought to what it could do, gives it a tug. As the two are sucked down through what is basically a giant toilet filled with demon sewage, I'm sure the irony of the situation is not lost on them as they're dumped into another chamber inside the castle. Aurora warns Jon away from a suspicious-looking door he approaches (is anybody else's Spider Sense tingling yet?), but as she hits the lever to open the front gates, they find Murder and a pack of his beasties waiting for them. Crap.

After the now-customary Wiseass Off as the two sides exchange a few cutting remarks, Murder's malicious minions march merrily towards our heroes, though not before Jon gets out a great line:

JONATHAN
(dripping sarcasm)
I'm so glad we took the front door.
No way they'd ever see that coming.

As the duo spring to action, we catch back up with Kate and Marius, Kate getting a nasty chop from a beastie as she desperately searches for more fuel for the fire, and it's pretty clear that unless Jon and Aurora get to them soon, they're going to be beastie-food in no time! Straight back into the action at the Sanctuary, our heroes put on another fab display of ass-kickery to put the twelve beasts before them in the mud, but in the action it seems Murder has slipped away. The duo make their escape - but Murder was watching the whole thing. An Evil Plan of the highest order is obviously brewing here, but there's a surprise in store as Aurora stops to look into a pool of water on the way. It's not Aurora. It's Rachel! Aurora's arch nemesis from her high school days! The one who tried to frame her for murder! And I didn't just have to go back and read 1x05 to remember who she was. Honest. *coughs* Anyway. With that little shocker out in the open at last, we flash back to the Sanctuary - and there's the real Aurora, still captive, still plagued by visions of evil, and still in need of a damn good rescuing as we end the show for another week.

Rah. This contains all the now-trademark elements of a good Afterlife episode. Cinematic fights and action sequences, snappy dialogue, the electric chemistry and interplay between Jon and Aurora, and now with the addition of Murder we have a Big Bad and a strong central story to tie the show together. The little twist at the end is fairly telegraphed, but even though you know something's not right with Aurora, you're genuinely surprised to see it's Rachel in disguise, especially when you consider that she just shagged Jon and think about how that changes the Jon/Aurora dynamic. Oo, love it. I do, however, have one big complaint with this episode. It's about ten pages too freakin' short! There's some fantastic stuff here but it moves a little too quickly - longer scenes around the camp fire with Kate and Marius would have helped make this a meatier script, and a little more Jon and Aurora is never a bad thing. We also don't spend as much time with Murder as we could have, so an extra scene or two with each and you're back up to a more standard 50 pages. Still. When the worst thing you can say about a script is that you wish there was more of it, I guess that shows what you do have is pretty freakin' sweet.

ZPM RATING: