What's Up, Doc?

## Cast

* Zach Valenti as Doug Eiffel and Alexander Hilbert
* Emma Sherr-Ziarko as Renée Minkowski
* Michaela Swee as Hephaestus Central Processor

**"What's Up, Doc?"** is the fifteenth episode of *Wolf 359*. It was released on 27 February 2015.

## Synopsis

Still rattled by their recent discoveries, Eiffel and Minkowski try to force Hilbert to reveal what he knows about the Hephaestus's mysteries and the details of his secret mission. But will they find someway to get their prisoner to cooperate with them? Or will their formidable opponent succeed in breaking them apart before they break him? Plus, pet monkeys, bad cop territory, winning personalities, irrational needs, and hammer time.

## Plot summary

The episode opens on mission day 583. Eiffel is on the bridge "running some tests" to determine if they can repair Hera. Minkowski arrives from performing a sweep of the station to document glitches that have developed since Hera went offline; she has counted fifty-one. She is confused why Eiffel isn't done, and it turns out he's been playing chess against the computer rather than any of the items on the to-do list she gave him.

She turns off his recorder, and begins to speak frankly, now that they're "off the record". She asks if he's found anything else, and he says he has searched but hasn't found anything else hidden from Captain Lovelace or anybody else. Minkowski says she hasn't been able to find anything in any records either. Eiffel suggests maybe Lovelace wasn't real, was just a trick by Command to scare them, like the Empty Man.

Minkowski says she doubts it, and that she thinks she remembers the name Lovelace from somewhere. She suggests maybe Hilbert could know something about it. They are able to watch him on a monitor, they have placed him in the observation deck since the mutiny, and Eiffel says he hasn't spoken during the past three days. Minkowski says that since she wasn't able to find anything, she will try to get him to talk. She mentions she had left him isolated without food or human contact for the past 48 hours to make him more vulnerable to bribery. She leaves Eiffel to watch and come to her backup as needed.

Hilbert says he's been enjoying the accommodations, but wishes he wasn't restrained, to which Minkowski replies that the last time he was unrestrained he murdered Hera. He disputes calling it murder, saying she was just a piece of technology, but Minkowski insists she was a crewmember.

Minkowski asks Hilbert what Cutter really sent him up to do. He deflects, saying she knows his order, but she persists in asking, insisting he hasn't told her everything. When he refuses to answer, she pulls out an apple she'd had cryogenically frozen and takes a bite. We can hear Hilbert's stomach growl from his 48 hours without food, and Minkowski offers to give it to him if he answers her questions honestly. She threatens to withhold food, water, and sleep from him until he tells her. He shoots back that she and Eiffel won't survive long either when the station is falling apart.

She escalates, threatening to throw him out of the airlock if he doesn't tell her something, and he says he prefers the airlock. She's shocked, having not expected him to call her bluff, and he calls her on the fact that she wants him alive since he's the only way she'll get answers. She agrees that it's a stalemate, but says stalemates can be broken, and threatens to break him slowly.

He says that she underestimates him, she doesn't know what he's been through. She says he doesn't know her either and he responds by calling her "a waste." He calls her a coward for being in the military during peace and says she is "skill without ambition, loyalty without intelligence, discipline without focus." And that she has always been simply following orders until she got this job and leaped at the chance to be in charge and to matter. She leaves, slamming the door, when he says she doesn't matter because people who matter don't end up "in a place like this one."

Minkowski returns to the bridge, frustrated, and Eiffel volunteers to try. Eiffel heads in and starts off with his usual pop culture references, which Hilbert complains is cruel and unusual punishment, but he still won't talk. Hilbert expresses his dislike for Eiffel, saying he wouldn't be happy to see Eiffel, and that they've had no good times together. Eiffel continues trying to reach out, saying they have a lot in common. Hilbert denies it and asks Eiffel to name one thing they have in common, and Eiffel says they're both terrified, claiming that Hilbert is terrified of "the folks back home."

Eiffel goes on to claim that he and Minkowski talked to Cutter and told him everything Hilbert had done, and Cutter didn't care. He says that he suspects Command didn't actually want him to look for alien life, they just gave Hilbert those protocols to see if he would actually follow them. He also says that Hilbert should probably be more worried about the people he's stuck in space with than the people back home who don't seem to care.

Hilbert turns it back on Eiffel, asking if he's afraid of Minkowski finding out why he's up here. He hints at something that was removed from Eiffel's files, and asks if Minkowski is listening right now, and if he should go ahead and say it for her. Eiffel cuts him off and tells him not to, then leaves when Hilbert tells him to.

When he gets back to the bridge, Minkowski confronts Eiffel, asking if she should know whatever Hilbert was talking about. Eiffel says it's not important right now, and that he didn't "murder anyone or anything like that." She drops it willingly, showing her trust, which surprises him.

Eiffel says he has another idea, and they both return to the observation deck together, this time saying that Hilbert doesn't care about the same things they do, he only cares about his research. They pull out one of his hard drives, and Eiffel smashes it with a hammer. They pull out his five duplicate backup hard drives and threaten to smash the rest if he continues to lie. When he hesitates, they smash another, and this appears to get to him. However, he continues to refuse to answer until they're down to the last hard drive.

When he refuses again, they hesitate. Minkowski pulls her gun out and threatens to shoot him. And he again says she won't kill him, that there's nowhere she could point the gun that would convince him to talk. She points the gun at Eiffel, asking if that will make him talk. Hilbert is tense even as he denies caring about that, saying he tried to kill them both. Minkowski counters by pointing out that he only knocked Eiffel out, rather than tried to kill him, and that she thinks his being alive is important to Hilbert.

Hilbert doesn't respond, but when Minkowski cocks her gun, he says "NO!" revealing his hand. Minkowski continues pressing this advantage and gets him to talk. He explains that he's been testing the effects of the radiation from Wolf 359 on a retrovirus, Decima, that kills very quickly. He is hopeful that certain mutations, helped by the radiation from the star, will heal or make people stronger.

He also reveals that the reason he kept it secret is because he was running experiments with the virus in Eiffel's bloodstream. He says he's been keeping it dormant in Eiffel when not actively experimenting, and that Eiffel will be safe as long as they have "an experienced molecular biologist on hand to render the virus inert."

## External links

* Listen on Libsyn.
* Official script.