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"Gag or Throttle" is the seventh episode of the fifth season of Orphan Black that aired on July 22, 2017. It is also the forty-seventh episode overall.

Synopsis[]

Westmoreland demands a more aggressive action on Kira; Sarah fights to save her daughter; Rachel discovers a dark secret; Cosima has a clue about Westmorland's identity.

Summary[]

A flashback: A younger Dr. Leekie is pontificating to the Neolution board, mostly about the clone project, and introduces a clone girl, perhaps eight years old, named Rachel Duncan. She is fully aware of her clone nature, and has memorized such things as the names and ID numbers of many other clones.

Now: The Neolution board is meeting, with P. T. present them by video, but Rachel is the dominant figure. She announces that Virginia Coady has taken over as chief scientist following the death of Susan Duncan. She introduces the eight-year-old Kira, their subject with the LIN28A gene, who will soon get biopsies of liver, lungs, and stomach.

Rachel and Kira are in Rachel's Dyad office late at night, Kira has been told she is there for sleep studies, though Kira complains of the needles interfering with sleep. Mr. Frontenac tells Rachel that Cosima's boat has been found nearby, and Rachel makes plans to go to the island.

Cosima and Charlotte return to the lab under the comic book store, and tell Sarah that Dyad's plan is to take Kira's eggs, first she will need hormone injections, and they will harvest the eggs in the next day or two.

Rachel has gotten to the island, and P. T. leads her to Coady's lab, where Rachel gets a surprise: Coady wants to biopsy Rachel to assess the cure. (Rachel has memories of P. T. making her chief of Neolution, and signing documents saying she's no longer company property, and documents that cancel her clone ID number.) She glances at her medical record on a monitor, and notices her clone ID number still there.

Virginia does the biopsy on Rachel, as Rachel recalls similar exams by Dr. Leekie, who told her that, even though she's an executive, she's still a part of the experiment.

At the lair, Cosima has filled in Scott and Hell Wizard on P. T.'s appearance in 1967, so he's no Victorian. They start looking for who he was before he took on the name P. T. Westmorland.

At the Hendrix's, Alison comes home. Her hair is different! It's purple! And she has a tattoo saying "Live deep"! She talks a lot about being artsy, creative, being present now! Donnie is supportive though nonplussed. She starts discarding her craft supplies and unpacks a music keyboard, she's going to compose music.

Rachel overhears P. T. and others discussing her and Kira, and when she comes in, he hides something in a drawer. They expect to harvest Kira's eggs in another day, and P. T. orders her brought to the island.

Another visitor to the island is Mark, brought to Coady, he's been doing her bidding, in exchange for her working on the cure for Castors. He also has something else to offer: Helena.

Helena is at the convent, and Gracie visits her.

Rachel pokes into the drawer in which P. T. hid something, and founds a tablet showing... whatever Rachel's artificial eye sees. She hides the tablet as he comes into the room, and leaves, but he watches her assessingly.

Rachel has a memory of when she showed Dr. Leekie the corpse of clone Miriam Johnson; Rachel had wanted to work on the cure, so she killed Miriam for the autopsy. Dr. Leekie blathers on for a while on how Miriam was a person, not just a lab rat.

Back in her office at Dyad, Rachel allows Kira to make a video call to Sarah. Kira shows Sarah pages from a story she's been drawing. (Over the last several episodes, Kira and Sarah have been making a game of making up code names for people and places, like Mouse for Kira, and Elephant for Rachel.) Even though Rachel and Mr. Frontenac are standing there watching, Kira uses her kid drawings to tell Sarah that Rachel just went to the island and came back, and Kira is about to be sent there, and Virginia Coady is there too.

Rachel is walking the halls of Dyad, carrying a glass and a bottle of gin. She spends a while looking at the video of her and Susan when she was young, drinking. She knows that P. T. is watching, and is not surprised when P. T. calls to ask her if she's all right. She pours the last of her gin into her glass, right in front of her line of sight, and hangs up.

Mr. Frontenac beings Kira to Rachel's video room, and Kira (with Kira's unusual sense) immediately asks Rachel who hurt her, to which Rachel says, "all of them." Mr. Frontenac says the doctors are ready, and Rachel says she'll give Kira the sedative.

In the lair, Scott, Hell Wizard, and Cosima have found all of the male students who died in Susan's college during the time she was there, and they recognize the obituary of John Patrick Mathieson from England, who "died" in 1967, and who looks exactly like the P. T. in the 1967 picture with Susan.

Rachel is back in her office, and getting drunker, while she breaks two pills into a glass of orange juice. Her eye sees her doing this. She then sees an image appear on her desk monitor: the obituary of John Patrick Mathieson, born in Texas in 1939, died in 1967. We can see P. T. (Mathieson) seeing and hearing all this. Sarah calls and says Rachel is taking Kira for her eggs, but she and Rachel both need a real family, and Rachel shouldn't want Kira to suffer what happened to Rachel. Rachel says it's out of her hands, and hangs up.

Rachel carries the orange juice to Kira and forces her to drink it, as Mathieson sees. Rachel has some memories of being in similar circumstances when she was younger, and not liking it then either. Kira sleeps.

Rachel goes back to her office and reads the obituary again. She summons Mr. Frontenac and says that Sarah has concocted a fraudlent scheme to invalidate P. T.'s age, she knows we're not returning Kira. He says he'll "take care" of them.

Mathieson is watching her eye monitor. She is looking at her spinning pendant, while off to her right side (out of the artificial eye's view) she is typing a text into her cell phone, ending with: "I assure you it isn't a joke."

Art comes to Mrs. S's, and tells Sarah: "you won't believe it."

Rachel goes to her meditation room, then puts an eyepatch over her artificial eye. She goes to the room where Kira is sleeping, and wheels her out.

Gunmen break into Mrs. S's house and search, but nobody is there. Mr. Frontenac reports to Mathieson.

Rachel and Kira get to an elevator in Dyad, it opens, and inside are Sarah, Siobhan, and Art. Rachel gives Kira to them, and goes back to her office.

Mathieson is pushing buttons on his tablet, causing Rachel's eye to flash and give confusing visions. Rachel ignores this as she uses her office system to send email to the Neolution board, announcing that P. T. Westmorland is a fraud, and attaching the obituary. She drinks more. Her phone rings, and she ignores it. She takes off the eyepatch, and the phone ringing stops. She finishes her drink, tosses the glass to the floor, producing glass shards. She looks down, picks up a big shard, and, with a good deal of blood and effort, uses it to pry out her artificial eye.

Credits[]

Main Cast[]

Guest Starring[]

  • Skyler Wexler as Kira
  • Matt Frewer as Aldous Leekie
  • Stephen McHattie as P.T. Westmorland
  • Kathryn Alexandre as Tatiana Maslany's Acting Double
  • Kyra Harper as Dr. Virginia Cody
  • Zoé de Grand'Maison as Gracie Johanssen
  • Andrew Moore as Mr. Frontenac

Cast[]

  • Calwyn Shurgold as Hell Wizard
  • Cynthia Galant as Charlotte/Young Rachel
  • Scott Wentworth as Dr. Van Lier
  • Eileen Sword as Sister Irina
  • Elie Gemael as Hashem Al-Khatib
  • Stuart Hughes as Cooper
  • Andy Marshall as Technician
  • Steven Gallagher as Male Physician
  • John Nelles as Dialogue Coach

Gallery[]


Sneak Peaks and Promos[]


Music[]

TBA

Trivia[]

  • This episode marks the first time that Cynthia Galant played the dual roles of Charlotte and Young Rachel.

References[]

Navigation[]

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