#122 Destiny – Primer

After escaping from the FBI, Valenti orders the kids to meet him at an abandoned mill where they can regroup. Max and Liz are separated from the group, and Max tells Liz he has control over his own destiny no matter what any book says. The two then declare their love for each other.

Fearing Max and Liz may have been caught, Valenti and Michael go in search of them. Michael has to use his powers in front of Valenti in order to rescue Max and Liz from the FBI agents. Valenti soon discovers the true alien identities of Max, Michael, Isabel and Tess.

Max then devises a plan to capture Agent Pierce by using Valenti as a decoy. With Pierce in their hands, Max turns the tables and interrogates Pierce as to the whereabouts of the missing Nasedo.

Meanwhile, while looking for his father Kyle discovers a tied-up Pierce. Still thinking he’s Deputy Fisher, Kyle releases Pierce. Pierce then tells Kyle to hide.

When Valenti, Max and Michael return, Pierce pulls out his gun preparing to kill the aliens. Valenti gets a shot off, but misses. Michael, seeing Pierce’s gun aimed at Valenti, uses his powers and accidentally kills Pierce. Valenti soon discovers his one gunshot has hit Kyle. Max saves Kyle’s life, and Valenti swears he’ll be indebted to them forever.

Meanwhile, Isabel had successfully dreamwalked Pierce and has the information of Nasedo’s whereabouts. Isabel tells Tess she fears Nasedo might be dead. Tess reveals she knows a way the four aliens can revive Nasedo. Wanting to be with Max, Liz goes with the four.

After a successful rescue of Nasedo’s body, Max, Isabel, Michael, Tess and Liz proceed to the pod chamber. Liz can only watch from the side as the four aliens revive Nasedo with the healing stones from their planet. Max then demands that Nasedo tell them everything he knows about the two orbs they now have in their possession. Nasedo tells them he is only there to protect them, and the orbs are communicators with their home planet. Nasedo warns Max if he uses the communicators, he may contact enemy aliens.

Max tells Nasedo to pose as Pierce in order to infiltrate the secret unit of the FBI. Nasedo shape shifts into Pierce, and leaves.

Max tells the others he wants to know what the communicators can tell them. Together, the two orbs cause an apparition of Max and Isabel’s mother who explains their existence. She tells them Max was a great leader on their planet, and Tess his wife. She further explains Isabel was betrothed to Michael, Max’s first in command. Their mother then tells them there is a war on their planet, and they were sent to Earth to be protected until the day they could come home to save their race. Before leaving, their mother warns them there are others on Earth hunting for them, and they will only know them from the evil inside.

Learning about Max’s true destiny, Liz makes the decision to let him go. Max insists to Liz that he still controls his own destiny, but not being able to stand in the way, Liz runs off. As Max and the others watch after Liz, we hear beeping from around the world. The enemy aliens are now aware of Max, Isabel, Michael and Tess living as aliens in Roswell, New Mexico.

Jason Katims Commentary

“…episodic television is like a MASH unit in a war…”

Transcribed by Lena

Yeah, I often think of doing episodic television sort of like it being a MASH unit in war, where you as writers are just trying to sort of put together a story in time and you send it out there and hope it’s able to survive if it’s able to live because everything happened so fast and by the end of the season with “Destiny” we were so close, when we were writing it to when it was being produced that it felt very much like that analogy of the MASH unit. By the end of it, there were three writers left who had survived the season, it was me and Thania St. John and Tony Gracia. We were trying to do the story and at the time that we did it, Thania’s had a death in her family and so she had to leave town, while we were breaking the story together and I just remember this day that we were literally on a cell phone and  it was on a weekend day for probably about eight hours, so I think that 18t regrets the three weekend minutes in any case hands to the director I think was about a day before they started shooting we did the episode and I was done with the season and I went away for a week and when I came back the episode was airing and I got together with a few friends and I was watching that episode as I oh my god you know, just remembering everything that we did, I would see a scene I was like ‘oh my god that’s two years of story that’s another year of story what were we thinking?’ It was like almost forgotten what we had written and then at the end the episode I saw where it had gotten to and what the cliffhanger was and I realized that we actually had done the right thing and put us in a great position to set up the next season stories and actually even though I was exhausted I got excited about coming back and doing more.