Designated Survivor – The Final Frontier

By: Patience Kapfer

After last week’s emotional episode, “Designated Survivor” takes on a more positive feel this week, delving into outer space. But not before we pick up where we left off – with Damian (Ben Lawson) pointing a gun at Hannah (Maggie Q) in her apartment. Hannah seems fully surprised to see Damian after having shot him in the chest on the bridge. However, he informs her that when another agent asks to meet on a bridge he assumed that she might have something more than sentiment in mind. As Damian continues to aim the gun at Hannah, he tells her that he’s spent the last ten weeks on the run, that if the Russians find him they will kill him and if the British find him they’ll know he’s a traitor. Eventually, Damian puts the gun down, but Hannah rushes to pick it up, but instead of shooting him, she hits him in the head and knocks him unconscious.

Meanwhile, at the White House President Kirkman (Kiefer Sutherland) has been hard at work preparing an emergency supply mission to the International Space Station. Currently the space station is in desperate need of repairs to provide the crew with fresh water and keep them from overheating. When we see Kirkman again he is having a nice breakfast with Penny (Mckenna Grace) or trying to at least before Mike (LaMonica Garrett) comes in to take her to school and he has to jump into his presidential duties. The president is briefed that the package includes fresh water and a replacement for the escape capsule’s damaged Central Processing Unit (CPU). It appears that the damage was caused by a corrupt software file that damaged the electrical systems, but they are unsure how the software became corrupted. The crew consists of two Russians, an Italian, and an American, the American -Commander Watkins (Wendy Davis) – says that they’ve done a good job rationing their water for the last ten days, but it’s definitely been tough. Luckily, in a mere 16 minutes and 48 seconds the package will be on its way and will take six hours to get to the station.

Hannah takes Damian to Aaron (Adan Canto) for questioning about his involvement with the Russians. However, Damian is eager to pursue other more time-sensitive matters that is irrelevant to his involvement with the Russians. Soon he realizes that in order to convey the information he must answer the Aaron and Hannah’s questions. Damian says he was turned by an attaché at the Russian Embassy in London named Alexander Popov who has since died. Damian tells them that Patrick Lloyd wasn’t working with the Russians, but 30 years ago the Kremlin had a minority ownership in Icarus Astrotech through a shell company. The goal had been to keep tabs on American military hardware, but the mission ended with Perestroika. When Lloyd stated setting up the First Lady and her mother by suggesting an ongoing bribery scandal with Icarus, Moscow got worried that the United States would think they were involved with Lloyd.  That would look suspiciously like Russia was trying to bring down the United States government. Therefore, Damian’s sole purpose was to prevent another Cold War. Even though Damian answered all of their questions, Aaron and Hannah still refuse to believe the information he has about the rocket launch. He says that if they don’t stop the launch the rocket is going down.

Emily (Italia Ricci) brings the new information about the rocket launch to President Kirkman, who says that if they abort the mission now it’ll be far too late once they are able to launch another rocket. After being told a Russian operative is responsible for telling them that they’ve been hacked, Kirkman says “that alone is reason for healthy skepticism.” However, Emily reminds Kirkman that in this case Russia has more to lose from a failed mission than the United States with more invested in their space program and more astronauts in space already. Unfortunately, there is only one choice – if they launch the rocket and they’ve been hacked, they lose the rocket, but if they wait and don’t launch then the astronauts die. The President and staff watch the lift off of the rocket, which appears successful until the rocket becomes non-responsive and begins veering toward the coast. In order to keep the rocket from going down in a populated area, it was essential that they terminate the launch, thus proving that the rocket was hacked and Damian was telling the truth.

Now it is absolutely imperative that they find a way to launch another rocket and fast so as to get water to the astronauts before it’s too late. Protocol states that they must ground the fleet until they can ascertain what went wrong, and a replacement CPU needs to be remanufactured and reprogrammed which could take days. The only solution is to ask another country for help, and Russia is the only country with a rocket that can get up quickly enough to resupply the space station. Kirkman sets up a meeting with the Russian ambassador Pavlov (Damir Andrei) and Secretary Moss (Geoff Pierson) since they have a longstanding relationship which might be beneficial in obtaining Russia’s help. Pavlov tells Kirkman that Russia would like to send one of their rockets, but they are constrained by their launch schedule, but Kirkman knows that isn’t true and that the Russian rocket has been hacked the same way as the United States’. Moss suggests that it would be best for both countries to put their heads together to find a solution, to which Pavlov says he will speak to Moscow. After Pavlov leaves, Moss says that he thinks Russia isn’t to be trusted in this situation and that Kirkman should call the Russia President and “read him the riot act.”  Before doing that, Kirkman holds a press conference calling out Russia for not helping them get a rocket to the space station and therefore placing Russia’s credibility on the line. Kirkman then threatens Pavlov that if Russia refuses to compromise he will trade Damian as a Russian spy on national TV and place severe sanctions on Russia. After the threat, Pavlov agrees to see to it that the Russian engineers coordinate with the Americans. Unfortunately, directly following the meeting the cooling system on the Space Station begins to malfunction giving the astronauts only a few hours until it will be 120 degrees inside the station. It is necessary that they are able to get in contact with Andrea Frost (Kim Raver) who created the system in order to figure out how to fix it.

The only two options to fix the malfunction are to do a space walk or to remotely cause an electrical surge in power that could result in increasing the temperature to even higher levels. As the temperature has already reached 116 degrees and the astronauts are incredibly weak, they decide the best course of action is to implement the remote surge. Thankfully, the electrical surge is successful and the cabin temperature begins dropping.

With Damian being the bearer of the hacking news, things aren’t looking great for him, but he tells them that this is just the latest in a string of other hacks and whoever is responsible is targeting both the United States and Russia. Hannah enlists Chuck (Jake Epsetin) to help dig into who perpetrated the hack. Chuck is unable to find any trace of whoever hacked into the system or what they did while in the system. Damian offers up another helpful tidbit – that he has a lead on the hacker Rook Storm. Rook Storm is since out of the game, but he might know other hackers who could be behind rocket hack. After visiting Rook, Hannah goes in search of the hacker responsible. They find Ollie (Nicholas Carella) admiring some orchids at a plant show and once he finds out that Hannah is FBI he takes off at a sprinters pace. Soon he gains a higher vantage point and begins shooting at Hannah who eventually allows Damian to use her gun to get a clean shot at Ollie. Once they’ve apprehended Ollie, he insists he isn’t the hacker responsible, but he did examine the code and it exploits a weakness in NASA’s operating system and Hannah passes along all of Ollie’s information to Chuck. Chuck determines that these hacks had to be done on-site and not remotely and also manages to find the one person who had those capabilities, a man named Shane Gillespie (Dean Buchanan). Shane was only a plumber, which leads Chuck to thinking that Shane’s swipe card was encrypted with the virus allowing him access past the firewall and then the ability to circumvent the high-tech security.

As soon as Hannah and Damian are able to get to Gillespie’s house, his wife informs them that it’s impossible for them to speak to him because he’s dead. Gillespie drowned ten days ago, just a day after the hacks. Luckily there were still able to find the card that had been hidden inside Gillespie’s sports memorabilia, but unluckily they still are no closer to figuring out who was initially responsible for the hack.

Even after finding the card, which helped to undo the damage committed by the hack, the Russians continued to balk at allowing the American’s near their technology. That is until Moss asks Kirkman for permission “sweet-talking Pavlov” who then agrees to cooperate. However, when Kirkman thanks Pavlov for agreeing to cooperate he is surprised to hear Pavlov say he appreciates Kirkman’s concession. Kirkman finds out that Moss told Pavlov that the US would not look into Russian involvement with the Icarus investigation, which understandably angers the President. Kirkman then finds out that Moss hasn’t only made one backdoor deal without consulting with him, but instead has been doing things behind the president’s back for weeks. At that President Kirkman tells Secretary Moss that his services are no longer required.

Even though the package safely arrives at the space station providing Kirkman with a win, his Presidential struggle is far from over. Someone, somehow hacked into the prison security system and released the footage in which President Kirkman is seen threatening the man who is responsible for his wife’s death. As the president’s closest aides watch the viral footage, we all wonder who is responsible for this hack and how will the president fix this.