Episode Recap: A Glitch in the System

If you were wondering if D'avin is still having PTSD nightmares about the service, you're right. Pawter, Dav's doctor and all around beautiful lady, can't seem to figure out what's going on in his head. Meanwhile, the Killjoys get a claim & clear warrant on an abandoned spaceship that's currently floating in the middle of an asteroid field. Claim & Clears are great because the Killjoys gets to keep whatever loot they find on the ship. Time for a shopping spree!

After a bit of jostling over who got to board the abandoned ship first, Dutch got the honors. But before long we find out that Dutch isn't alone on the ship: there's a creepy guy following her, and the number 17 is written on the walls in blood. Before Dutch can catch the guy, Lucy announces that she's going into quarantine procedures, which means the bridge between the Killjoys' ship and the abandoned ship has now been retracted. What's going on? Meanwhile, John and Dav have been separated to different areas of the abandoned ship, with Dav finding another stowaway named Hogan. Just as Dutch catches up with the stowaway she's been chasing, he gets into the airlock and blows himself out into space. And now Lucy isn't responding to them. What the HELL is going on?

Hogan, the guy Dav found, gives some explanation: he and Wilson (the airlock guy, R.I.P.) got stranded here when they came to salvage from this ship, and the same thing happened to them, with their ship pulling away and everything. Hogan also reveals that he's ex-military, which endears him to Dav. He and Dutch separate, Dav and Hogan off to the infirmary and Dutch to find space-suits so they can get back to Lucy.

Meanwhile, though, John finds archived video surveillance footage of the ship and its old crew. They seem to be a research crew, and on one of the tapes, John spots a younger Hogan. John tries to communicate to Dav that Hogan shouldn't be trusted, but Dav isn't able to do anything about it in time. By the time he spots Hogan's leg wound — which has self-healed! — it's too late, and Hogan has the jump on him. Hogan then subjects Dav to the kind of experimentation that was the ship's real purpose. He sticks Dav in a glass enclosure, and then a computer program begins "implantation" — white smoke is released and enters Dav's body. And pretty soon, the program starts interrogating Dav, asking what he knows about the mysterious "Red 17." When Dav says he doesn't know, the program starts to burn his skin from the inside!

Dutch and John find each other, and they watch the security footage of what happened to the original crew. Basically Hogan went nuts and the crew were all subjected to the program's interrogation. They all died, because nobody knew what Red 17 was. As Hogan later tells Dav, even he doesn't know what Red 17 is. But the interrogation must continue. Dutch and John find Dav and Hogan on the surveillance cameras but don't know where in the ship they are. As they watch the interrogation, Hogan asks Dav to confess the worst thing he's done, and Dav (after much torture) spills about how he killed his entire unit in the war. He can't remember why or how, he just knows he did it. John and Dutch are taken aback, but they have to find him.

Dutch has a plan: she lets herself get captured by Hogan and taken to be implanted with the white smoke. Now she's being tortured about Red 17 too, and she also tells Dav that he's family to her and John, no matter what he did in the war. And then she blows up Hogan! She's still being tortured by the program, though, so she makes a run for the airlock and shoots herself into space! Dav has no idea what's going on — what's the plan here? John explains: since the program was built to alternately torture its subjects and then heal them again, it can't do both at the same time. So with Dutch out in the ravages of space, unprotected by a space suit, the nanites that were implanted in her are too busy healing her to torture her. She manages to make it all the way back to Lucy, who immediately places Dutch in quarantine. It's only when Dutch says that John's in trouble that Lucy lets her out. Figures.

Back on the ship, John and Dav — after killing Hogan AGAIN (those nanites really work!) — set charges and explode the ship (and thus the torture program) just in time to escape. While they go through decontamination, the Jacobis brothers bond over Dav's secret being out. And later, Dav and the good Dr. Simms have an incredibly sexy appointment. She may not know what's wrong with his head yet, but she knows what's right with the rest of him.

And finally, Dutch finds another red box in her room. Khlyen shows up and tells her she can't get away with not carrying out the assassinations. She wants him to leave her alone, but he threatens to harm Johnny and Dav, so Dutch has no choice but to leave with him.