The DSR 1x13 'Gold'

by A.J. Black

The raid of the hi-tech Vienna vault to recover the alchemist codex goes well after a setback and Jai remains undercover, but Kendall fears the mercenaries are tempting him back into his old life with their plans to achieve immortality...

Straight into 1x13 so I can see if all the set up of 1x12 pays off, and we have Tony Black remaining in the writer's chair for the concluding half of this mid-season two-parter. There's a little ambiguity being set up over Jai's motives in this one, but to be honest that's not really making itself as big a deal as I think the staff would have hoped. It's pretty clear so far that Jai's still a DSR man, but hopefully we'll see his conscience get twisted a little more as we push on. Jai's switch of alleigance from mercenary to government man is the one fact of his character that hasn't really been explored in great detail this season - we know now that he's still trying to cope with Connor's condition and his hatred for Glissman, so this new angle should help shed a little more light on him and help him develop into a more rounded character.

We swoop down across the Alps to pick up the Gare du Alpine, the luxury passenger train that currently holds both the Painted Lady and Sanetza's codex, a black helicopter catches the train up to deposit Jai and the rest of his merc team down onto the Vienna, the carriage that contains the prize. The fact that we haven't even had introductions for the other two mercs on the team yet already has them wearing big Red Shirts over their black gear, but there you go. La Font is inside the Vienna carriage, a man on the inside as he heads off to carry out part two of his mission - but he passes Anton and Ethan! Sadie is in the train too, passing La Font a keycard before staggering mock-drunkenly into the passenger carriages. Mia is keeping a close eye on Sadie, following her into a passage - and finding a dead security guard, apparently strangled mid-shag! Ruthless. With Sadie now falling firmly into the Xenia Onatopp sphere of bad girls, Mia sees that Sadie is now climbing bravely along the outside of the speeding train, just as La Font uses the keycard to gain access to the Vienna at last. Have to say, it's not as heavily guarded as La Font was making out last episode - he made a big point of 'twenty four hour, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year' coverage, yet with one keycard he's already within visual range? Ethan is tailing La Font, but he's soon in the typical Ethan pose - flat on his arse after being decked by the bad guy - as Saide warns him their operation may be compromised. La Font smoothly switches off the Vienna's security laser grid defences as Jai's team begin their side of the op, but no sooner have they gained access than Jai has tranqed the other two mercs before whipping out a roll of piano wire, starting to garrotte Hibbs! We cut to black from this - what's going on here, I wonder?

Mia locates the downed Ethan, who manages to elicit some TCP out of her at last as Sadie and La Font realise that their strike team has been compromised. Sadie runs into Mia, and after a brief exchange of gunfire Sadie stumbles in on Jai still strangling Hibbs, shooting him in the arm to get arm to get him to stop. Mia turns up and trades gunfire with Sadie for a moment, zipping in for a bit of girlfighting and knocking Sadie down, taking off after the escaping Jai as Sadie swipes the codex and drags the wounded Hibbs away. Anton tries to stop them, but is disarmed by La Font, and he can only watch helplessly as Sadie and Hibbs jump off the train (yes, they jump. Off the train. The moving train. I take it the train isn't going that fast, then!), followed by La Font. On the roof of the Vienna carriage, Mia sees Jai steal away on the helicopter (which appears to be in Sanetza's emply), before we return to PBH for the mission debriefing. I'll just interject at this point to say that the whole train mission felt ridiculously easy after how much La Font was bigging it up last episode - what use were those two other mercenaries? Seems to me like Sadie and La Font could have pulled the whole thing off between them! Jai's double double cross is a great spanner in the works, but still - bit of a wasted opportunity there. Anyhoo. Mia reports on what happened, and both she and Kendall are shocked by Jai's apparent betrayal, but Carson has her suspicions confirmed at last about him. Kendall wants to give him a chance, but as Mia recommends bringing him in for questioning, we switch to the Sanetza villa in Greece, where Jai meets his new employer. Sanetza gets a nice pun with the 'I see you have suffered for my art' line (see, I do notice things like that!), and Jai reveals that he was tasked to sabotage the mission but kill Hibbs. The thot plickens! Sanetza seems pleased and also mentions something he promised Jai (which I think I can already work out, along with who La Font's mysterious 'employer' is), and as we see Hibbs recovering with Sadie and La Font in their safe house, where La Font is ordered to get the Painted Lady back. The codex they have is worthless without it, you see! Back at PBH, Ethan and Mia have a chance to talk at last, but she's not interested in his attempt at reconciliation as Sara tells Anton she thinks she may have figured something out. La Font was consulting Eduardo Nadal, a Spanish historian, about the team he was putting together, and Sara asks Anton to be her backup on a mission to go see Nadal. Kendall is in his office when he receives a call from Jai, although Jai can't bring himself to say anything. Hibbs calls next, arranging a meeting with Jai to talk about some kind of mutual exchange in Baku, and the stage is set for the next round.

Over in Bilbao, Spain, Anton and Sara are ready to meet with Nadal to get some more answers. Nadal seems unaware of La Font's true intentions, but no sooner has he mentioned something called the 'Obscura Circle' than bang! He's dead. Anton heads off in pursuit, kicking off a pretty cool rooftop chase for the sniper as Sara raids Nadal's office for more info. She finds some handy-looking files but is confronted by a goon as she tries to exit, and despite almost getting past him she's halfway towards getting strangled when Anton swoops back in to save her. The team analyse the files back at PBH, and it seems La Font was tracking the genealogical roots of five contemporaries of Sanetza Snr. Carson confronts Kendall about his insistence to believe Jai's switched sides, and Kendall angrily rebukes any of her accusations. Sara and Anton have a chat to historian Daneen (from 'Mage'), who reveals that the Obscura Circle is all about a posse of dark alchemists looking to perfect a formula called the 'Transmutation.' and that formula is what's encrypted into the Painted Lady. Jai, meanwhile, is on a private jet with Sanetza when he's asked about the DSR, with Jai saying he just wants to get 'even.' More cryptic refences are made to the Transmutation before we return to PBH as Daneen presents his findings. Surprise, surprise, the five mercs La Font assembled (or thought he had, given Jai's switcheroo) are the direct descendants of Sanetza Snr's posse of alchemists - the Obscura Circle, the next generation (and yes, I'd figured that out. Because I'm clever). Kendall decides to offer to trade Austin for Jai, but they don't know that Jai isn't with La Font, blowing his cover as they contact La Font! The DSR team head for a rendezvous, not aware that La Font is one step ahead of them, as he meets with Jai in Baku to swap the codex. And Kendall wlaks out with Austin. Eep! The headache-inducing standoff (because now everybody knows Jai is Jai, but I'm waiting for it to settle down so I can work out who's working with who) leads us into Act III...

We don't wait lonf for our answer, as Kendall, Jai and Hibbs are dumped into the water! Hibbs gets to a knife and fress the trio from their bonds, and as they reach the surface again it's time Jai explained himself to the two guys he's just screwed over. At a safe house, Jai reveals that Sanetza offered him the means to cure Connor (aha! I was right), and the guys figure out that Sanetza is trying to work around a legal decree in Sanetza Snr's work that stops him from reforming the Circle himself, using La Font to get it done. Credit where it's due - that's actually a pretty clever plan, and makes a lot of sense. And as Sanetza Jnr and La Font relax on their way to their next location, you can figure out for yourselves who La Font was really working for (I got it wrong. I thought it'd be Glissman, so more kudos to Black for the misdirection here). Kendall gets the rest of the DSR team moving as he and Jai have one of those surrogate father.wayward son talks, and it comes across pretty well, with Kendall's faith in Jai being rewarded at last. Meanwhile, at PBH, Mia and Ethan spark off again, and Mia reveals it all comes back to when Ethan ratted on her back in 1x09 (by blowing the whistle on how Mia helped Sara out). Sanetza, meanwhile, has been located, buying back a property in Sardinia used by his ancestors (stickler for tradition, obviously), but as Kendall is informed he decides that he, Hibbs and Jai should go in first. The trio break into the mansion's grounds, heading through a service tunnel when Jai hears something, some kind of underground machinery. Hibbs isn't interested, but runs straight into Sadie and gets the team busted, but as she offers him a place back in the team, we black out once again.

Act IV gives us a captive Jai and Kendall (not having much luck today, are they?), while Hibbs gloats (and Jai gets off a joke to Sadie that won't make much sense unless you know more about the actress playing her), and Sadie tells Jai that if he kills Kendall, he can have a place back on the team. Sadie's clearly a willing disciple of whatever La Font and Sanetza are planning, and waits as Jai trains the gun on Kendall... and shoots Hibbs. But he's only got one bullet, and lets Sadie go rather than fight her. She's clearly made an impression on him one way or another, but you have to question a guy who only seems to like women who could take him in a fight! The bond between Kendall and Jai is restored as the duo head downstairs to stop Sanetza, disrupting the ceremony as Kendall waxes lyrical about the Transmutation being the key to immortality (getting the 'lead into gold' line that links to the episode titles, detail fans), but Sadie shows up to spil Jai's party. Jai and Kendall can only watch as Sanetza and the others plunge their hands into the strange distillation device that all the fuss is about - but are instead killed as molten lead surges out and cooks them from the inside out! However. The lead turns to pure gold, which somehow revives the fallen villains (o-kay...), before killing them - again. Jai blinks in surprise, as the rest of us do, and Kendall offers these words of wisdom:

JAI
What happened? The formula worked.

KENDALL
(wonders)
Maybe that’s exactly what the
original Diego Sanetza wanted
everyone to think.

Uh... what? So... if Sanetza's formula didn't work, why go to so much trouble to hide it? Am I missing something? Jai and Kendall return to PBH, with Kendall publicly giving Jai his backing again. Mia's still pissed off, and Carson takes Ethan to one side to discuss their 'plan' in more detail (remember that? going back to earlier in the season there). Mia gives Jai the cold shoulder as he tries to speak to her, and it's lights out for another episode.

So... what was that all about, then? We go from mercenary double cross to a high tech train robbery, ending in a Raiders Of The Lost Ark style quest for immortality that kills off all our villains with very little explanation or consequence. There's one thing that keeps sabotaging Black's scripts - he's great at setting a story up (the revelation about Sanetza's plan in Act III is noticeably clever), but he just can't seem to finish them off properly, to do his set up justice. We needed to make more of the train robbery, getting into it at the end of 1x12 so we could have had Jai's attack on Hibbs as our cliffhanger, then make more of the actual lead & gold sequence instead of wrapping the whole thing up in a handful of pages. And while we're on that subject - what happened? Why did they all die? I really didn't get that at all. If the Transmutation was a failure, why were the instructions hidden so carefully? I'm open to some kind of explanation on that score, because I may have missed something, but as it stands the conclusion to this really didn't make much sense at all. That said, there's good moments here - the train raid works well (although it could have been a lot longer), there's some good character growth on Jai's part (at last), and Sara gets more field time which is always handy. This is a story that promised much but stumbled at the final hurdle, which is a real shame as we could have had a killer on our hands here.