Elementary - The Eternity Injection - Review

Elementary has occasionally in the past brushed up against the edges of Science Fiction. This is perhaps unsurprising in a way, given its consistent focus on rational analysis, and even its subtle but consistent employment of technology as a key trope. Usually, I am not too happy when the show begins to push against the edges of what is actually possible now and begins to blur the line (e.g. the drone episode, the AI episode), but in this case, I'll make an exception. "The Eternity Injection" is one of this season's stronger episodes, and its strength emerges in part from how it weaves the cutting edge science it uses into the episode's thematic pattern.

Though I could have lived without another case having its genesis in a personal connection between the characters and the crime--in this case, a nurse Watson (Lucy Liu) once worked with has disappeared, so another former colleague seeks out Watson to try to find her--the case itself offers a satisfyingly baffling and circuitous plot. Turns out the missing woman is dead, murdered. No surprise there, really, as Elementary uses  murder as its most frequent crime. What is surprising is the why. As Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller)--who horns in, as he often does--pursues the case, we learn that the nurse is only one of several other victims, one of whom in fact killed her before being dispatched himself. The episode takes its time revealing that the nurse was administering doses of an experimental drug in an illegal drug trial; the drug causes terrible neurological damage in those injected with it, leading one to the homicidal madness that results in the initial murder and to those behind the illegal trial trying to cover their tracks by killing everyone else involved.

A funding group called Purgatorium (this turns out to be more than a little bit on the nose) has paid for the trial to try to develop a drug that affects its users' subjective sense of time: EZM is intended to be a time dilation drug, which would allow users to experience hours, perhaps years, of subjective time while only minutes or perhaps hours pass objectively. Some drugs do affect one's sense of time, and the possibility of the development of drugs that could well extend and enhance this effect has been the subject of some recent news stories. Indeed, one possible use of such a drug--to sentence criminals to years of subjective imprisonment while far less time passes objectively--is not only one of the possible uses Holmes mentions but also a potential use not infrequently discussed in articles on such drugs. It's actually hard to imagine how a significant shift in one's time perception could be anything but . . . if not hellish, at least purgatorial, as everything outside of the person would of necessity not share the time dilation. Basic human interaction would become extremely difficult, if not impossible (how can you talk with someone when a second for them lasts an hour for you?); even simple tasks would become profoundly problematic. Imagine reaching for a sandwich and experiencing the subjective passage of six months before you were able to pick it up . . . or, worse, your body attempting to function at an accellerated rate comparable to how you were perceiving time. . . . (I suspect we are not expected to consider such points, but what can I say, I'm a SF fan, so my mind tends to consider such potential ramifications of scientific innovation.)

In an enjoyable piece of guest-casting, the doctor who has developed the drug is Dwyer Kirk, played by Lawrence Galliard Jr., most recently seen as Bob on The Walking Dead. Galliard has little to do in the episode, other than to refuse to tell who actually paid for the drug's development, but I was pleased to see an actor from a SF-oriented show (Walking Dead "explains" its zombies as victims of a disease and has pursued plots focusing on scientific investigation of zombieism and the possibility of a cure, so one can make a case for it as SF, however scientifically implausible it actually is) appearing in an episode with a bit of a SF vibe--especially given that one of the unintended effects of the drug is to create not a literal zombie, but a brain-rotted test subject who kills people, while the intended effect is actually to create something not unlike a zombie, in a person whose perception of temporal dilation will effectively dissociate him from the human world.


The genuine culprit in the episode is the very rich James Connaughten (Dakin Matthews), who is close to death himself and desperate for a bid at immortality. The drug is his gambit; he hopes it will make his final weeks or months of life seem instead like years, decades, perhaps even immortality. Not much of a life, perhaps, as Holmes notes, but still life rather than death. Whether he gets his wish remains unresolved by episode's end. Knowing the police are on to him, he injects himself with the drug, and we last see him in bed, unconscious. We have no way of knowing whether he is experiencing time dilation or irreversible neurological damage that will merely shorten his life. Either way, though, his future seems grim.

That the episode does not insist on the efficacy of the drug--leaving open the possibility that Connaughten has succeeded without insisting on it--goes  a long way, for me, towards making the SFnal trappings acceptable in a non-SF show. However, what really makes the time dilation idea effective in the episode is not its literal elements (and let's face it, the whole plot is somewhat thin: an illegal drug trial involving only five subjects? a man near death anyway financing multiple murders to conceal an illegal drug test?) but instead in how the ideas resonate with Holmes's life.

The episode begins with Holmes and his AA sponsor, car thief Alfonso (Ato Essandoh, in his first appearance in a while--great to see him back!--and we also have Everyone turn up again, as well as virtuoso hacker Mason, played by Robert Capron, for an Irregular-heavy episode), working on figuring out how to crack a new cutting-edge car alarm called Odin. Get too close, and the system sets off a ten-second alarm, photographs you, and notifies the police. Even if one can disarm the alarm and get away with the car, therefore, one's photograph has been sent to the police. The alarm is uncrackable, Alfonso thinks--it's an insoluble problem--so he recruits Holmes to help him figure out a way to beat it. So far, the connection to the main plot is thin: Connaughten is trying to beat one unsolvable puzzle, death, while Holmes tries to beat another. That the alarm is called Odin perhaps adds a bit more depth to the connection. Odin is a complex divinity, with many associations, but among them is the relentless pursuit of knowledge, or wisdom, which could connect him to both Holmes and Connaughten in different ways. Like another aspect of Odin, Connaughten is also unconcerned with the social compact and justice but rather only with his own agenda. Odin is also associated with war and destruction; Connaughten's willingness not merely to experiment on but to sacrifice ruthlessly the subjects of his trial is not inconsistent with Odinlike behaviour. Insofar as Connaughten is an arrogant, ruthless pursuer of knowledge willing to sacrifice others, he is Odin-like, and Holmes is trying to crack him, just as he is trying to crack the alarm.

Insofar as Holmes an arrogant pursuer of knowledge, though, he also is like Odin, which raises the question of what Holmes's attempt to crack Odin's code might mean in relation to himself. Like Connaughten, Holmes also feels the pressure of time. This case touches on his own current mental state. We see its influence on him in several ways, perhaps most overtly in a scene in which he listens to music while contemplating eternity. His subsequent conversation with Watson makes the connections and contrasts explicit. Holmes has become disaffected with AA, finding the endless
repetitive grind of maintaining his sobriety profoundly draining. Miller is especially impressive in this scene, as he always is when showing Holmes's vulnerability. The problem with sobriety for Holmes now is not really the temptation to use--he acknowledges that for him actually to use would be anti-climactic--but instead his sense of the endless and meaningless time stretching out before him, which he images as like the steady, erosive drip of water. He and Connaughten are both, in their own ways, caught up by the idea of time: Connaughten is desperate to get more of it (which he seeks via a drug--another link to Holmes), while Holmes fears consumption by its inescapable slow grind. In this context, we might recall that Odin's fate is to be consumed by the wolf Fenrir, symbol of the inevitable destructive power of nature--not a personification of time specifically or explicitly, perhaps, but certainly a manifestation of the devouring force of the universe. (Is it perhaps significant in this context that Holmes wakes Watson the following morning with a trumpet blast--like Gabriel blowing his horn at the end of the world?)

Can Holmes find a way to beat time? Does Odin in this context represent the inescapable countdown? Does Holmes's eventual solution to the problem--a low-frequency EMP (there's that use of technology again) to suspend the alarm, in effect stopping time--suggest that his pursuit of knowledge will ultimately be able to short-circuit the alarm, bypass the countdown, and save him? Only (dare I say it) time will tell.

How did you like this episode? Let me now in the comments below.