Justin Hartline
Background
This week’s episode focuses on the developing relationship between Medical Officer Claire Finn and Science/Engineering Officer Isaac (my personal favorite character). Isaac descends from the Kaylons, a mechanical race who believe they are superior to “biological life”. A big part of his interactions with the crew involve his misunderstanding of humanity and his attempts to learn more about it. Both Isaac and Claire are among the most serious characters in the series.
Claire is very intelligent and her clinical analysis skills and levelheadedness under pressure can make her seem almost robotic at times. But she balances this with a kind and motherly nature as well. This has led to her becoming the de facto therapist aboard the ship.
Isaac and Claire didn’t really interact until Season 1 episode 8, “Into the Fold”, where Claire was about to go on vacation with her sons, Ty and Marcus. Isaac served as their pilot and they wound up getting stranded and having to work together to escape. While they didn’t get along at first, it’s later revealed that the experience has had a lasting effect, as we see Isaac giving piano lessons to her son Ty in a later episode.
Summary
This episode begins with a humorous exchange as Claire calls Isaac to help her edit a paper that she’s working on. Isaac arrives, banana in hand, remembering that Claire cranky when she’s hungry. After quickly editing her paper, Isaac makes the observation that Claire changed her hair, which she didn’t think anyone would notice. Later on, Ty is having a piano recital, which many of the ship’s crew attend. Afterwards, there’s a party to celebrate his progress, where Isaac reveals to Claire that while Ty will never be as good as he is, the boy exhibits a focus that is uncommon among humans and that she should be proud of him.
After that, Claire goes to Kelly (the second officer) for advice about her developing feelings for Isaac. While Kelly worries that she might be projecting her feelings on to Isaac, she advises Claire to be careful. She then suggests that Claire is a smart woman and if she really wants to try dating Isaac, she should give it a shot. What follows is a fantastic exploration of what it means to be human, what is means to love, and the struggle of relating to someone who has difficulty processing emotion.
Analysis
While this episode was quite heavy on dialog, I think worked to its advantage. I’ve always enjoyed the strange but friendly relationship that Isaac and Claire shared. I was a bit apprehensive at last week’s preview suggesting that they were going to take it in a romantic direction, but to be honest, I was more excited than anything else. I’m a romantic at heart and I usually root for romances like these to work out. I think my biggest frustration with this episode was with Isaac.
Claire spends a good portion of the episode talking with her friends about her feelings. Her motivations for developing feelings for Isaac are perfectly clear, especially with the way he’s helped to take care of her and her family. Isaac, however, is much more difficult to read. His lack of vocal inflection combined with his blank mask of a face create a struggle to interpret his intentions, even as he struggles to interpret the intentions of others.
Isaac does talk a little about his home planet, but unfortunately, the only thing he mentions are dry facts. One interesting thing we do find out is that Isaac is only meant to be stationed on the ship until Isaac collects enough data for the Kaylons to decide whether to join the Planetary Union. This makes me wonder when and if this happens, what will ultimately become of Isaac?
Also, while his misunderstanding of human behavior has caused him to act awkward in the past, what he winds up doing in this episode is pretty abominable. That said, as frustrating as he was in this episode, everything he did was perfectly in character. At one point in the, he even uses the simulator to appear to Claire as human, and Mark Jackson does a fantastic job portraying Isaac’s robotic nature with his all too human face.
I also liked how the episode was broken up between Claire talking to her female friends about the relationship and Isaac talking to his male colleagues. The separation of the two differing points of view made an interesting statement on the differences between genders, though I was left wondering what would have happened if Alara hadn’t left the show (since she was close with both of them). This episode led to a major shift in the dynamics between Isaac and Claire and I’m interested in seeing how their relationship continues to evolve.
