Suspicion
The Archives
Episode 3 of Biohackers begins with another glimpse of the past, this time involving Mia as a child inside that upturned car. After unbuckling herself from the seat, she pulls out a shard of glass wedged in her arm. This seems to explain the scar we’ve seen. From here, she tries desperately to save her parents who are stuck in the front. Back in the present, Mia watches Lorenz with disdain during a lecture – so much so that she snaps a pencil in anger. In front of so many people, this seems like a pretty suspect thing to do. Anyway, not long after Mia heads back to the lab, desperate for answers. She manages to get into the Archive where she finds numerous refrigerators full of samples. The unmanned computer is her ticket here and she immediately searches for the name “Ben Engels.” Getting nowhere fast, she looks for a corresponding name instead – “Emma Engels.” This seems to reinforce the Emma we heard in episode 1 and confirms what her real name actually is. Mia appears to be an alias.
The Truth About Jasper
That evening, Mia convinces Lorenz to join him and head out together on another date. As she leaves the lab to get ready, Jasper brandishes a strange blue vial of liquid. For now this is kept hidden as the duo arrive at a nearby party. Of course, Lotta, Chen-Lu and Ole all turn up too and find Double Helix, the local YouTube celebrity for body hacks. Mia and Jasper smoke together before heading back to Tanja’s very nice apartment. There, she manages to get some alone time away from Jasper and tries to hack into Lorenz’s computer. However, she’s distracted by Jasper cooking up his crazy cocktails again in the basement lab. Unfortunately this time the effects are less than desirable. With his pulse racing, Jasper collapses on the ground and forces Mia to phone Niklas for help. It turns out Jasper has Huntington’s Disease and now these experiments are starting to make more sense. It seems Jasper is conducting this research and working on gene therapy for years to try and help himself. However, Lorenz is dangling a potential cure over him like a carrot on a stick to keep him working. If he doesn’t, that cure may well be lost. With nowhere else to turn and Jasper’s condition deteriorating, they’re forced to phone Lorenz and get help in concocting a serum to bring Jasper back from the brink. Needing an extra pair of hands, she eventually brings Chen-Lu over to help synthesize.
A Miraculous Recovery
It works too and Jasper eventually recovers. When Lorenz returns home, she questions Mia over just what she’s doing in her house. This eventually leads to the pair talking in private. Promising to keep the evening’s events a secret, Mia is let go as Lorenz wanders into a different room to speak to Jasper. It’s just the opportunity Mia needs to slip back upstairs and into the office. She scrambles onto the computer and tracks down Daniel Engel’s files. There, she learns that his research was conducted as part of Project Homo Deus. As she prints out the files, Mia recklessly wastes precious time as she looks at her own files too. Just before Lorenz catches her, Mia slips out the room. Unfortunately she doesn’t manage to pick up all of the printed files, which remain agonizingly in the printer. As Mia leaves, Dr Lorenz notices Mia’s handiwork of disconnecting her wi-fi. Cutting forward in time, we learn exactly what started the incident on the train. Jasper sits across the carriage from Niklas and Mia. He holds a jar of mosquitoes which he claims to have created himself. Sporting a bloodied eye and a plastered nose, he breathes heavily before twisting the cap and unleashing hell on the carriage.
The Episode Review
As we’ve now learned, Jasper is the one behind this bio-attack on the train. What drove him to do this? And just what is Project Homo Deus? There’s plenty of tantalizing questions startling to bubble up here but for now, everything is kept under wraps for the second half of this drama. There’s definitely an interesting mystery here but it’s squashed slightly by a need to seriously suspend your disbelief. I’ve said it before but Mia is one of the clumsiest spies I’ve ever seen. Does she beat Johnny English? Not quite but it’s definitely close. The angry snapping of the pencil isn’t questioned by anyone – not even Lorenz – while the sneakiness in Lorenz’s house doesn’t raise any red flags either. Having said that though, learning more about Jasper’s motivations and why he’s working with Lorenz is certainly a welcome inclusion to the story so it’s just enough to look past some of these flaws. As we move into the second half of this series, things are definitely starting to heat up after a pretty slow start.
