Season 1, Episode 6:
True
Knitter: "Can you do one thing for me? Can you just hope that we make it right? I'm not afraid to fight, if that's what it takes. But it has to be for a purpose. It has to matter. To you."
An indeterminate time into the future, pro-Galanthi and anti-Galanthi factions battle in the post-apocalyptic remains of London.
Tropes in this episode:
- After the End: Earth is not in good shape. At least 5 billion people are dead, all the land we see has been bombed into rubble, the Planetary Defense Consortium and FreeLife Army are warring over what's left, and this has been going on for so long that the younger members of Stripe's squad don't initially recognize the vegetables in a hydroponic garden, or the concept of a hydroponic garden, when they see one.
- Alien Space Bats: Invoked deliberately. The Victorian-era artifacts and sim-strips marked with '1896' found in the Galanthi facility indicate that the researchers were always planning on traveling back in time and creating an alternate history.
- Bait-and-Switch: When they learn that the last Galanthi is trying to open a portal, the PDC group fear that it wants to return home and abandon Earth to its fate. It's actually opening a portal to Victorian London in an attempt to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
- Benevolent Alien Invasion: What the Galanthi appear to be, as they've been trying to save humanity by fixing the planet's wrecked ecosystem.
- Church Militant: From what we see of the FreeLife Army, they have a distinctly religious bent to them.
- Driven to Suicide: Both Stripe and the original Molly True. The former when she believes the Galanthi are leaving Earth to die, the latter after being worn down by a lifetime of unhappiness.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Many oddities about Amalia True from the past five episodes are explained by The Reveal that she is a soldier from the far future transported back in time into the body of a dead woman.
- Formula-Breaking Episode: The first five episodes took place in Victorian London in 1899. "True" opens in medias res in a post-apocalyptic Earth an indeterminate amount of time in the future, and shows how Zephyr's consciousness traveled from that time to the Victorian era. Word of God says it's sometime in the 22nd century.
- Future Slang: Boatloads
. Most of the below is inferred from context rather than explicitly defined in the show.- Byner: A PDC hacker/technical specialist.
- Crescent: Leader of a PDC squad.
- Cryer: FreeLife propaganda speaker.
- glazers: Coolant pods.
- gray: Inexperienced or lacking in knowledge.
- Knitter: A PDC medic.
- pheen: Morphine.
- Pride: A PDC division.
- spore: A human being altered by Galanthi spores. They prefer 'empathically enhanced'.
- Stripe: A PDC combat specialist.
- virgan: Referenced as "all that 'flesh is evil' crap". Implied to be a form of Machine Worship or Cybernetics Eat Your Soul.
- Mass Super-Empowering Event: Revealed in more detail to be caused by Galanthi spores. Interestingly, in the future, the spores simply increase human empathy and allow them to utilize Galanthi technology and understand their language - the superpowers seen in Victorian London are new.
- Playing Possum: When we meet Stripe, she's been doing this by swallowing coolant pods so that her body doesn't emit heat.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Implied to be the purpose of the Galanthi time portal - Earth in the future is too far gone to be saved, but an intervention further in the past might be successful.
- The Reveal: Many.
- Amalia True's real name is Zephyr Alexis Navine, and she is a soldier from the future who was sent back in time.
- The Galanthi are extraterrestrials who came to Earth through portals, apparently with the goal of helping humanity right its course. When their various environmental restoration projects were destroyed by the paranoid FreeLife Army, they decided to travel backwards in time to the Victorian era and prevent the doomed state of humanity from happening in the first place.
- Amalia is at least partially responsible for Maladie becoming what she is today, as she brought Sarah's claims about seeing "God" to Dr. Hague's attention to divert suspicion away from herself when they were both in an institution.
- Someone else from the future may have been transported back in time.
- 20 Minutes into the Future: No date for the post-apocalyptic period is given, but the technology and cultural changes indicate it is certainly later than the modern day.
- Virtual-Reality Interrogation: After being transported into the past and waking up in Molly's body, Amalia initially believes this is what is happening.
- Wham Episode: True's true past is revealed, as well as the origins of the Galanthi and the Touched, how the Orphanage was set up, and what happened to make Maladie the way she is.
- Wham Line: During Amalia's psychic link with the Galanthi.Unknown: "Did you think you were the only one who hitched a ride?"
