Is Ryan as big a bonehead as he seems?

[Beastmaster]

I really loved the first episode of season 2. But the one thing that still bugs me is how Ryan always seems to know just enough about the visitors to help the resistance in a pinch, but can never give any of the big answers -- why are they here, etc. it's just a bit silly.

in the original, the resistance's inside visitor, willy, was clearly such a low level pawn in the visitors' game that it made sense why he was clueless about the big picture. but ryan was an advance visitor on earth for years, he clearly knows a lot, and anna even knows him by name. it just kind of grates on me and makes me believe that he is not as trustworthy as he lets on. why doesn't erika just sit the guy down for a long chat?

[savingpeoplething]

Ryan DID help The Resistance understand phosphorous, so there's something.

Maybe there are things that Ryan doesn't know?

I wondered like you why he didn't tell Erica and the gang more info about the Visitors' anatomy, but then I thought "well, there are things about the human body that I don't know or understand and couldn't tell anyone about", so I'm cutting Ryan a little slack for now.

[Lightning Strykez!]

Hey Beastmaster,

I have to politely disagree with you for the following reasons.

For one, Ryan was sent years in advance of the Visitors' arrival. Who knows how much he really was informed then. When he went back on the ship to get Phosphorus, he had to disguise himself as a low-ranking officer similar to the position he had previously.

In addition, if it's true that Anna overthrew Diana in a staged coup, was information lost in the shuffle during that change of power? Did Anna change their goals completely after Diana went away? We already know that she doesn't see things the way Diana does in terms of rulership and dealing with the humans. Perhaps those changes in mission were not communicated to the Visitors already on earth. After all, they were apparently sent DECADES earlier during Diana's reign. And when you look at "forgotten" Visitors like Cyrus it's pretty obvious that they were left out of the loop on some things.

Finally, keep in mind that even Lisa--the next Queen herself--admitted in "Red Rain" that only Anna (and possibly Marcus) understands the meaning of Red Sky/Rain. So clearly, there are a LOT of things that the Visitors are in the dark about in terms of the master plan. This ties in well with the "hive mentality": workers and drones generally just carry out orders and tasks.

It is the Queen who runs things.

[Beastmaster]

Hi Lightning Strykez. Thanks for that. I had not considered some of that. I think your best point is the hive mentality, as illustrated by Anna's comment about nobody, human or visitor, can comprehend the magnitude of what's happening..... I guess if she has to say that to the ship capitans, then there are a lot of secrets kept in Anna's mind indeed.

But I still think Ryan played it a little too coy with the resistance so far, especially in the early stages. One would think that there are lots of things about Visitor anatomy, habits, culture, etc. that would have been really useful to the resistance and that he could have told them. How about their leadership structure? Do they have any other enemies that we could enlist as allies? Also, one would think that Erika would be all over Ryan with questions and theories about why on earth Anna and Lisa are so interested in her son of all people. You would think she would want to put her head together with him after all these episodes to at least brainstorm about what it could be. All of these things I would think Ryan could be capable of, without actually knowing the grand plan.

I'm also not so convinced that Ryan is such a low level guy. He's like a visitor CIA agent who's gone undercover. Those guys are typically not sent in without serious training. Plus, in one of the early episodes (I can't remember which), when they went to blow up the warehouse with that "flu remedy" in it, I remember that Ryan sure knew his way around a state of the art Visitor computer system in order to blow the place up. One with think that with that level of tech knowledge, he could also tell the resistance some juicy little huggets about their technology and how to disrupt it. I am probably thinking about this waaaay too much! :-)

Thoughts?

[Lightning Strykez!]

Thoughts?

Um, bad writing perhaps? Plot holes?

[darkphoenix21]

Ryan only knows as much as he has been told and/or has experienced. Many Visitor like Ryan don't know what Anna has in store for the humans and for that matter her own people. During the episode Anna stated just that...that even her own people don't know what's coming.

[Baron Karza]

As Phoenix and Lightning point out, there's NO reason whatsoever for Ryan to have ground floor intel. Whatever he knows is beside the point anyway.

Anna is watching him now. She might even be tracking him with a chip. Whether he can be manipulated by her or not, he's a monumental liability to the team now.

[Lightning Strykez!]

^ And I think he will eventually defect and go against the 5th Column. Not out of principle...but for his daughter. And now that Anna has put human skin on the baby it's going to harder for him to not think about Val.

[Baron Karza]

Does the baby have a skin now? All I saw was some kinda alien head in a tank.