As we head into the second episode of the second season of Halo, have have to be honest and say that despite the new focus on getting the story moving a bit faster than the previous season, I’m yet to see anything that stands out as being noticably different.
I mean, we still got scenes of Pablo Schreiber’s Master Chief (aka. John) obsessing about his very existence; dissension within the ranks of the Spartans; mystery concerning the ethics of Natascha McElhone’s morally iffy Catherine Halsey and spiralling plot threads concerning Bokeem Woodbine’s Soren, Yerin Ha’s Kwan and Charlie Murphy’s Covenant aligned Makee that pretty much mirror what he had before and it’s still managed to slow things down to a crawl much like it did before – but while this second episode still insists on piling on the human drama while there’s multiple races of alien fanatic itching to wipe us out, the show still shows just enough promise to keep me watching.
In the wake of his brawl with a gang of Elites, Master Chief is beginning to fall through the looking glass of conspiracy while he tries to get his new handler, the shifty Ackerson, to believe his fears. Not only is the burly warrior convinced that the Covenant are training in order to pull of something big, but he swears he spotted human turncoat Makee despite the fact that his teammate Kai put a bullet in her months ago.
Speaking of Kai, she’s being pressured by Ackerman to out John as being mentally unfit for duty after his separation from cheery A.I., Cortana, but unbeknownst to anyone, the new handler of the Spartan programme is actually the one who is now in possession of her and is using her ability for accurate projections to predict events before they happen. He is also the one who has Halsey too, seemingly keeping her imprisoned in V.R. while he sends numerous imperfect clones of a young girl in to both torment her and keep her company for reasons unknown.
Elsewhere, on Rubble, we find Kwan Ha doing some snooping into the disappearance of Soren while trying to stay ahead of the people she’s “indentured” to – i.e. a’form of slavery. But back on earth, Master Chief’s sinking feeling has him drilling his team mercilessly to counteract whatever the Covenant have planned much to the discomfort of a still injured Riz who bears the deep scars from six months prior. But while she finds relief in the form of some zen healing courtesy of blind, ex-Spartan, Louis-036, nothing seems to be able to ease the mounting dread of her chief, and when an another team haven’t reported back after a routine mission on the planet Reach, he galvanises the Spartans (against orders) into investigating the disappearance.
However, on Reach, Makee and the Covenant may already be making their move.
I’ve alluded to this many times before – and I guess I’m going to keep alluding to it until something changes – but I dearly want to love Halo with ever fibre of my being, but the show just refuses to do itself any favours and with Sword, it’s very much a case of same old same old. It isn’t that I have an issue with a show having an overabundance of plot, it’s just that Halo’s pace at the best of times turns a slow burn into a sluggish smoldering and you just want the damn thing to get a move on and get to the damn point.
Once again we find ourselves tracking a wildly disparate cluster of threads that will no doubt synch up by the finale, but for some reason barely half of them actually grip you as they should.
Taken separately, the parts of the story that sees Kwan targeting Rubble’s seedy (or should that be even more seedy) underbelly, or the weirdly personal torment that Ackerson is putting the imprisoned Halsey through should be gripping, but I’ve long since given up giving a shit about Rubble as anything that occurs there rarely seems to amount to anything. Conversely, while my ears prick up whenever we get some Cortana plot trickle through, the twist here is that this may not even be the real Halsey as so much about her imprisonment (clone visitors, VR surroundings) is falsified already.
However, once again, it’s the Spartans that somewhat save the day as their various issues should be what we’re focusing on all along.
While Riz has hardly been the most magnetic character in the past, her moments trying to deal with her injuries are legitimately intriguing as her renewed sense of self sees her opening up her point of view to take on zen healing to aid with her lingering pain and the introduction of Louis as a Spartan trainer proves to give Halo some slower moments that actually mean something. Elsewhere, we lightly tread around Kai being asked to question Master Chief’s motives and general leadership and while this might ultimately lead nowhere, its important that the rest of the Spartans do something, especially seeing as we could have the Battle of Reach hitting us at any time.
In fact, its Reach that’s giving us our most tantalising threads as it’s pretty much the only one that connects to the main bloody premise and while Master Chief (and the show in general) is taking the long way around the barn with a heart to heart with the missing jigsaw piece of his investigation -namely Talia, the grunt he saved on Sanctuary – it allows him to drop some battle hardened wisdom about survivor’s guilt and gives him the last clues he needs to make a bold choice.
That choice is defying virtually every order that Ackerson has ever given him and convinces his fellow Spartans – by lying – to join him on an unsanctioned mission to search for the missing team on Reach.
Those of you who are Claude up on their Halo lore will no doubt be aware that some serious shit goes down in this particular planet (so much, in fact, it got it’s own spin-off game) and it’s the promise of a gargantuan and costly battle that’s keeping me going and even the return of Makee and the Key Stones (Ackerson has the smaller one) hints that Halo may soon slam into fifth gear in a big, big way
Yet another episode, yet another forty five minutes of Halo treading water to divisive effect; and yet even though it’s making the same mistakes as before – only at a slightly faster pace – writing off the show with one of the most important parts of the game’s backstory looming over us like a Covenant warship means that the season isn’t quite ready yet to dramatically fall on its Sword.
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