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S1E11 - Boundary Line

  • Episode opens with Cheng-Shin asking Tanabe out on a date, while Hachimaki is in earshot. She's nervous and not really sure, but he's keen so it's a date. As they're sorting out details Hachimaki interrupts to call her to work.
  • A huge bulky spacesuit drifts along the corridor and interrupts them again. It's a businessman (Mr Temara) from El Tanika. He's surprised when Hachimaki knows where that is since it's a very small and poor country. He knows because that's where Claire is from.
  • Three managers discuss the spacesuit that the businessman is trying to sell them. It's bulky and clunky. But Dolf defends it - it has some interesting properties. They foist the qualification work on Claire, telling her to do the required assessment work and then turn him down.
  • Tanabe and a friend discuss the date invite in a bar. Her friend asks about Hachimaki, aren't they dating? Tanabe denies it and starts ranting about Hachimaki, her friend interprets this as she like him and is in denial about it.
  • Hachimaki helps Cheng-Shin plan his date, but he gets irrationally angry about it and storms off.
  • Claire and Temara talk in the canteen, he's very happy to hear that someone from El Tanika works on the front line of space. She is not so proud of her home country and excuses herself from the conversation.
  • Claire and Temara are doing the rounds, trying to find a section to test the suit. However they're not having much luck, everyone turns it down just on the clunky looks. Hachimaki overhears them and volunteers to test it.
  • Temara makes a sales pitch to debris section and they're excited. for silly but practical reasons. The suit is huge (so even the overweight Philippe could fit in it), your hands are free inside the suit (so Yuri could fix his contacts if they slipped), it's more like a mini space ship with air filtration (so Fee could smoke in it) etc.
  • The suit passes most tests, and Temara stays up all night tweaking the control system to make it pass the final tests (which it struggled with) perfectly the next day.
  • Cut to a workshop with people building stuff from scraps and stripping machines for parts. Temara calls them to update them on the progress up in space. It's clear they've scraped together the last of their money to pay for Temara to go into space to sell this thing.
  • Temara and Claire chat as they prepare for testing. She didn't learn to read until they left El Tanika for America, she seems happy to have escaped. Temara was illiterate until he was 10 and then he left and earned a degree in China, but he went back. Claire is shocked he'd go back to such a broken country, but he has a vision to start a small space industry and make the country prosper.
  • Brief cut to an Orbital Security Agency patrol craft in orbit. They have an arrest warrant for Temara.
  • Hachimaki, Temara and Tanabe test the suit out in space. A ship approaches and Fee calls them back inside. The patrol craft pulls up alongside them and tells them that INTO forces have invaded El Tanika and they need to take Temara into protective custody.
  • Hachimaki triggers the wishbone to "malfunction" and to pull all three of them away from the arresting officers. Giving them just enough time to rush through the final qualifying tests, which it passes.
  • Temara looks down on each and sees El Tamara and even the lake where they tested the spacesuit. From up here you can't see any borders.
  • Cut to El Temara forces fighting off extremely advanced INTO military vehicles with AK-47s and rocket launchers (and getting slaughtered). A shot from a tank demolishes the entire workshop where the spacesuit was built.