Though last week's big Arkfall onto Defiance was narrowly averted by God [slash nanomachines], that doesn't stop it from ruining all kinds of shit this week. See, it contains an American astronaut from 2013, believed to be one of nine who perished on the ISS when it blew up. (And played by Brian J. Smith, who is like the most sympathetic person on TV anyway, here pushing his accent to the limit.) And while Yewll's not talking, Nolan and Amanda begin to believe that perhaps the Votans were abducting humans for study before the Pale Wars even began.

Doc -- whom we know was a fairly high-ranking war criminal at one point -- admits that the Votans took prisoners for study, a program she was involved in, but by way apology she pronounces the young man healthy and sends him off to Rafe McCawley's for a culture-shock cushioning night of whiskey and Robert Pattinson jokes with Nolan and Amanda, while poor Rafe looks adoringly on and dresses him up in dead Luke's clothes and makes him sleep in dead Luke's bed, etc. (Very sweet, awfully sad.)

Cut to the middle of the night, when an overserved Amanda wakes up to find Commander Gordon McClintock, one eye blown and crazy-looking, preparing to murder her ass. Nolan saves her, at once, and immediately starts yelling and threatening everybody who crosses his path: Connor Lang for being her boyfriend and an E-Rep ambassador, Doc Yewll for being an alien, just everybody.

But what seemed to be a story about Rafe's longing for a vanished world suddenly flips into a second-level parallel for Irisa's own journey, as Yewll reveals the truth: Gordon isn't Gordon at all, but an Indogene android imprinted with (dead) Gordon's memories and set to murder the highest ranking official in the vicinity when activated. Stuck between his memories of the man he remembers being and the weapon he's learned they made, Gordon heads off to commit suicide in the McCawley mines -- further foreshadowing Irisa's fate? -- even after a measured, sad Rafe McCawley tries his best to convince him of the opportunity he's been given.

Meanwhile, Amanda is rocked by the return of Connor Lang (Gale Harold), who begs her to come away with him to New York -- up against the Defiant Few statue, at that -- and who, after failing to win her back, explains his real agenda: To get Amanda out of Defiance, so that the E-Rep (particularly that bitch from the train robbery episode, Olfin Tennety) will stop trying to murder her. (Without knowledge of the Riordan/Birch/Kaziri storyline, and motivated by his own jealousy, Nolan tries to blame Connor for the Volge attack, which is of note only because it means he's still connecting the dots wrong.)

Kenya drops Datak as a client, resulting in some small amount of violence and Stahma desperately trying to clean up the mess: Eventually, over Kenya's sweet (but kind of racist) declarations of Castithan patriarchy and whatever, she tells her girlfriend straight up: You need to play this game better, before you get us both killed. It's a minor plot in the episode's threads, but still a powerful one: You see about five different versions of Stahma peeking out, over the course of probably five cumulative minutes of total airtime, as she works to juggle the huge mess she and Kenya have already created.

And while it's a bittersweet comparison Amanda draws, between seeing Connor Lang appear like a ghost from her past and romantically imagining Gordon returning to his sixty-year-old bride after being gone for so long (not to mention reborn into a violent new form), the last few minutes of the episode provide some very satisfying twists:

As the sole witness to Gordon's "suicide," Rafe strongly implies that Amanda's fantasy -- set to an Elvis Costello song, naturally; tearjerking for sure -- will soon be coming true, when the McClintocks are reunited after all. Just hoping their town doesn't, you know, have a mayor.

Next Week: Though Nolan threatened to beat Yewll to death like six times this week, all of that will have to wait, thanks to a hemorrhagic fever that will take down Amanda and Christie, at the very least, before it's run its course. Perfect time for an E-Rep blockade -- or to deny Defiance, and Amanda, the medicine they need, under the guise of quarantine.