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Minority Report
Fiddler’s Neck
Original Air Date: Oct 26, 2015
Vincent Chia – Sr. Reviewer
vincent@thetwocentscorp.com
Tonight’s episode of Minority Report didn’t involve the typical crime of the week. Instead, our heroes returned to Fiddler’s Neck Island to help Agatha prevent the murder of someone close to her. We get a tiny glimpse of the island that the precogs went to after the precime unit was disbanded but that Arthur and Dash eventually left.
We start with a brief flashback to one of Agatha’s first days on the island, in the year 2054. She meets a man named Brian and his horse Mercury. In present day 2065, Agatha has a vision of someone close to Brian dying. Art, Dash, and Vega travel to the island to help Agatha. Will Agatha and Vega get along? Let’s find out!
Only one ferry a day travels to the island. It used to be a peninsula, but climate change flooded a lot of the area and turned the peninsula into an island. The island’s residents don’t like outsiders too much. I had this thought that the secluded island that the precogs went to was somewhere out in the middle of the country, perhaps in the midwest or thereabouts. However, it appears that the island is relatively close to Washington, D.C. The island has an improvised police crew called the “guardians.” The Guardians are led by and old acquaintance of Art and Dash. (side tidbit: Dash’s nickname was “slash,” something that Arthur explains was an jest but Dash doesn’t quite pick up on.)
Another mini-mystery: In the movie Minority Report, the precogs seemed to have gone to an island completely devoid of population other than the three of them. But in the tv show, the island is a tiny rural community. Which is fine, except wouldn’t the precogs get visions of some of these people? Would the island, however sparsely populated, be “quiet” enough for them even if it were just a dozen people there?
Back to the show: the audience gets the explanation that Agatha’s pre-cog abilities differs slightly from Arthur’s and Dash’s in that she “becomes” the victim of the murder. She sees things from the point of view of the future victim. Vega asks Agatha to describe what she sees in her vision. Agatha sees things from the point of view of a young girl. She says that her stomach hurts, as if she were poisoned. She also sees Brian. Vega suspects that the murderer is Brian, but Agatha says that Brian wouldn’t harm his own daughter.
Our heroes go to the local farmer’s market to find Katie, Brian’s daughter. Katie is coughing and Vega secretly scans Katie to see if she has already been poisoned. She has not. As an aside we get a glimpse of future food norms when Vega asks why the corn is so small. She is expecting a “normal” ear of corn to be about three feet long, but Gabby, Brian’s wife, explains that natural corn is only about one foot long.
Gabby gives Katie an herbal lozenge that was prescribed by an herbal doctor. Vega asks Dash about the island’s “doctor.” Dash pays the doc a visit. The doc lives in a van and says humans weren’t meant to live in cities. They are supposedly very unhealthy. (Although I was born and raised in a large city, and still live in one to this day, I do understand the attraction of a more spacious outdoorsy lifestyle. It’s just that I’d be a poor farmer, ya know?) The doc says that Katie came down with malaria. When Dash comments that it should be easy enough to get the malaria vaccine, the doc goes off on a rant about how the vaccine is more dangerous than helpful. Brian wanted the vaccine, but Gabby resisted. Vega wonders whether the denial of vaccine would be considered “murder” in Agatha’s visions.
Art offers to get contraband vaccine smuggled into the island, but his delivery drone is shot down by the local law.
Art and Dash find out that the Guardians are illegally growing tobacco on the island. Since Gabby is very conscious of being healthy, she would have resisted the tobacco plants.
Agatha sees a vision of Brian giving Katie a possible poison, but it turns out that Brian was giving Katie the vaccine behind his wife’s back.
Our heroes soon figure out that the water on Brian’s farm was poisoned by the Guardians. Dash manages to grab Katie just a second before she drinks the water. However, it’s not over. The Guardians head to Brian’s farm armed to the teeth.
Although Vega was able to take out one of the intruders, Art, Dash and Vega are eventually all held at gunpoint. The leader of the posse is about to burn our heroes alive when Agatha shows up and saves them. She provides an ample distraction for Vega and Dash to overcome the remaining three or so Guardians.
In the end, Agatha explains to Brian that even though they were in love, Agatha left him because she saw two different futures for Brian. Brian’s life with Agatha would have had some great moments of happiness, but overall, Agatha saw that Brian would be happier with Gabby and Katie. So I guess in a way, this is the introduction of the “Minority Report” concept. Except, in the movie, it was a report of an alternate future regarding murders. We see that Agatha (like in the movie) is capable of seeing alternate futures. Perhaps she will see an alternate possibility to the three precogs being wrangled again by the government to be imprisoned in a milkbath chamber.
Vega, Dash, and Art take the ferry back to D.C. Although Agatha still doesn’t seem to completely trust Vega, she seems to be willing to wait for the future to unfold.
Overall, I liked this episode. It was an interesting departure from the normal murder of the week. I enjoyed learning a little bit more about Agatha and hope to learn more about Arthur. Will Agatha’s milkbath premonition unfold in the next few eps?