Series 2 Episode 2

The second episode of the second series of the British thriller-drama action, Utopia, was first broadcast on 15 July 2014. The episode was produced by Kudos Film and Television for Channel 4.

Synopsis
Five months after the destruction of the manuscript, things have been quiet for Ian, Becky and Grant. Believing the Network to be finished, they each try to resume some semblance of normality, but the Network's plan is only just beginning.

Plot
Five months after the events of the first series, a newscast announces global unrest because of Kazakhstan buying up land owned by America and China to feed their struggling people while a man goes through a screening process to get into a pyramid-shaped structure. As he is given a cattle prod, he notices what appears to be a bite mark on a guard's hand. He approaches a woman sitting in a cell, a guard warning him that she must stay handcuffed so long as he is with her. The woman is revealed to be Jessica Hyde, and the man introduces himself as Ross, her new interrogator. He assures her that he will not be violent like his predecessor (she jammed a screwdriver into his spine in retaliation) and pulls up her sleeves to see dozens of bruises. She asks if Ross can get her a bible.

Arby, having grown out his facial hair and lost weight, walks down a residential street with his yellow Network bag in hand. He enters a house and stops in the living room, where a little girl, Amanda, is watching cartoons. He asks if her mother is home and reaches into his bag, but pulls out a stuffed toy for her. She gets off the couch and hugs him, addressing him as "Peter", and he corrects her that his name is "Pietre". She takes him to the couch to watch cartoons with her. Her mother and Arby's girlfriend, Tess, returns home. Back to working at his IT job and bored out of his mind, Ian Johnson considers stapling his tongue until he is interrupted by his boss, Joe, who wants to see if he is alright. Ian asks if it is possible to die of boredom, and Joe becomes alarmed when he mentions the stapler. He insists that Ian is not alone and that he had a cousin who also attempted suicide, revealing that a failed suicide attempt is Ian's cover story for his disappearance five months prior. He confides that he himself has had suicidal thoughts, which prompts Ian to get back to work. Joe leaves him alone, taking the stapler with him. Ian looks for Becky using facial recognition software as he usually does and gets no matches.

Ross visits Jessica for another session, monitored by Milner on security cameras, and Jessica notes that he insists on calling her "Jess". He says he does so because that is what Christos called her. He explains that they have successfully extracted Janus from her blood and are ready to put it in the Russian flu vaccine, but they cannot release it until they know what adjustments Philip Carvel made to it. The Network believes Jessica knows what they are and wants to cut open her brain to extract the information, but Ross is stopping them from doing so in hopes that Jessica will tell him. He notes that she is her "father's daughter," and Jessica expresses disgust, hating that her father used her as a genetic container for Janus. Ross insists that Carvel loved her.

Arby walks across the same road where Jack Tate committed suicide on his way home and runs into Lee, having survived being shot but sustaining lung and nerve damage, leaving him with a permanent cough and his left arm and hand inoperable. Arby notices Lee has a green Network bag with him, but Lee insists he is just using it as a pack and is invited in for food. Arby explains he is working as a plumber and has been seeing Tess for four months. Lee asks if he struggled to adjust, having coped with his own transition and past atrocities by obsessively brushing his teeth. Arby says he thinks they can move on now that the Network is over, but Lee informs him they have started operations again and he has been sent to bring Arby back for a hit job. Tess and Amanda arrive home and Lee introduces himself as an old work friend. Amanda notices his bag and asks what is inside, and Lee lets her reach in and pull out a gas canister, passing himself off as a dentist. When they turn their backs, Lee casually sets his gun on the table and begins smoking an e-cigarette before telling Arby he needs to come back.

Geoff Lawson holds a press conference informing the public that a struggling Corvadt will be mass-manufacturing the Russian flu vaccine and introduces Michael Dugdale as their temporary CEO. After the conference, Lawson tells him he did well and looks forward to working with him. Dugdale tells Lawson he hates him and to remember he is only stepping in until the vaccine is shipped. He sits down in the CEO's office and places a picture of his wife and daughter on his desk. He returns home to an empty house and eats a shoddy microwavable dinner alone. Staying late, Ian asks Joe to get a drink on a whim. At a bar, Ian ignores Joe's office gossip and asks if he ever feels his life has become meaningless. He confesses what actually happened to him five months ago, but Joe believes it to be fiction and continues talking. Ian gets a Google alert for "Grant Leetham" and leaves. Grant now lives in an apartment by himself, his cover story having been that he committed suicide after being framed for shooting up his school. Ian is irked to find he is spending time on chatrooms with his real name and tells him Milner is fixing things for him, but an irate Grant points out that they have not heard from her in months. Grant tries to fight him when Ian stops him from leaving, and Ian ends up punching Grant in the face. Grant tells Ian he is going to call the police and implicate Ian as a pedophile, but instead storms off to his room and smashes it up.

Wilson Wilson, now with a more professional eyepatch and working for the Network, waits in an office. He pulls a spoon out of the couch cushions just as Milner enters, having revealed to him that she is Mr. Rabbit. He asks why she did so, and she says it is because they killed his father and tortured him, and yet he still chose to betray his friends because he knew the Network's cause was righteous. Wilson asks if he is capable of doing what the Network needs him to do, and Milner asks what he sees when he looks at her. Wilson tells her "I see someone who's killed thousands, who murders, tortures, executes innocent children without hesitation." She insists that she did not want to be Mr. Rabbit but she became him anyway, and therefore, Wilson is capable. Arby and Lee enter, the former meeting Milner for the first time. She hugs him and tells him she can see Carvel in him, shocking Arby that she knew his father. She tells him to kill Christian Donaldson for knowing too much and wishes Arby could have known Carvel, but he interrupts her, saying his name is Pietre and that his father was not a good man. He leaves, and Lee notes she is being unusually empathetic, Milner revealing she is just trying to get Arby back. She tells Lee to send a SWAT team as backup to ensure Donaldson's death. They both leave Wilson, who is visibly terrified of Lee.

Ian gives Grant a soda and sits with him, Grant wishing Becky had taken him with her and saying he hates Ian. They both agree that she was great. Becky stands on a rooftop, breathing heavily, contemplating jumping. Donaldson appears and begs her to stop, but she expresses exhaustion at staying with him and doing what he asks for more Thoraxin to keep her Deels at bay. He offers a year's worth if he does something for her, and she steps away from the edge. He instructs her to seduce professor Tony Bradley, a former colleague of his who has written a book on Deels. Donaldson wants to steal his knowledge, believing Bradley to be too stupid to come up with his conclusions, write his own book, and profit off of it. Becky does as he asks and gets Bradley to take her back to his place, where Donaldson follows them, bursts in, and holds Bradley at gunpoint. He demands to know how Bradley wrote his book, but Bradley insists he did it on his own. Becky hears a knocking coming from the door under Bradley's stairs and unlocks it to see an old, disheveled man who does not speak English. They find the door under the stairs leads to a secret room where the man lives, and Bradley explains the man wandered into one of his lectures five months ago and started writing complicated equations on the board, so he took him home and apparently used his knowledge to write his book. He only responds to the word "Anton", and so Bradley believes that is his name. Donaldson ties his and Bradley's wrists together, gives Becky his gun, and the four leave.

Jessica explains to Ross that she was allowed to move around semi-freely in the complex until she attacked her previous interrogator. He tells her that he believes in Janus, but not in Carvel and asks if she wanted children, Janus having rendered her infertile. An emotional Jessica asks if she would have been a good mother, and Ross assures her she would have. He warns her that they are running out of time and tells Jessica she does not deserve to be hurt when she asks why she hasn't been tortured. Lawson talks to Leah Gorsand, a Network agent and the CEO of Rochane, a foundation interested in funding the vaccine. Milner invites Lawson and Gorsand to watch a video presented by Wilson that announces "V-Day", a date set for November 16th that will see vaccines rolled out across the world. Lawson is appalled by the incredible cost of the event, but Gorsand states her plan to cover the cost: have several wealthy individuals, including her husband, inconspicuously killed and their worth bequeathed to the corporations funding V-Day. She wants Lawson to announce the health department's support for it and he refuses, knowing delaying the vaccine in England until every country is ready for it would kill his career, but Milner reminds him he has a career in the first place because he obeys the Network.

Thinking giving Jessica a bigger environment will help the interrogation process, Ross has Jessica moved to a cell in a large, open room with a sink, a screen broadcasting a video of a cloudy sky on one wall. She admits to Ross that she does not know what the adjustment is and only pretended to know to stay alive, allowing herself to be tortured for five months instead. She undresses to show him the scars on her back and discreetly wets her undershirt as she puts her jumpsuit back on. She tells him his methods are different and that he tries to get in her head. He insists that he is not in hers, and she calmly tells him she knows and whips her undershirt at him, splashing him with his water and electrocuting him with his own cattle prod. She kneels over the incapacitated Ross and smugly tells him "I'm in yours."

Ian locates Becky on his software and skips work, fetching Grant and leaving to find her. She was picked up on a security camera outside an abandoned building where Donaldson has a hideout set up, having felt as though he has been followed recently. Becky follows Anton as he wanders while Donaldson looks for a knife to cut his and Bradley's twisted cord, resorting to trying to chew through it while Bradley begins to look ill. Ian and Grant arrive and Ian has Grant stay by the door as they go inside. Becky finds Anton walking back and forth and muttering in his language before she is distracted by a noise. Grant wanders around and comes across a pistol-brandishing Arby, who he flees from until Arby catches him, noticing the shadow of a man with a gun on the other side of the door and warning Grant to keep quiet. A SWAT team soldier enters, his gun pointed at Grant, until Arby seizes him and holds his own gun to his chin. He promises to let the man live if he tells him how many soldiers are in the building, and kills him when the man tells him four. He tells Grant to come with him or the rest of the men will kill him.

The noise turns out to be Ian. Instead of being happy to see him, Becky asks what he is doing there. She seems not to understand why he wanted to find her, and Ian remarks that "this is not at all going how I imagined it would." Two soldiers interrupt them by closing in on them, but Arby appears and kills them both. He tells them to wait for him until he kills the last one as Ian and Becky instinctively cling to each other. Donaldson loses his gun as the last soldier fires on him and Bradley has a heart attack and dies, weighing Donaldson down as he tries to run. The soldier closes in on him but is shot by Arby. He cuts Donaldson free instead of killing him and introduces himself as Pietre, telling him they all need to run. The group flees into a field, taking Anton with them. Grant is terrified of Arby, citing his past murders, but Arby points out that he saved their lives and the soldiers were only there to kill Donaldson, who is incredulous as to why he would be marked.

Jessica stares at her video display while Ross struggles to keep his feet on the ground, hanging from a noose made from the pages of the bible he gave her, Jessica having wound it into the cell gate's door mechanism so the operator has an equal chance of killing or releasing Ross. The operator explains this to Milner, also explaining that the mechanism will trigger if they enter her room. Jessica has not made any demands, instead staring at the display for five hours straight. When the operator explains that Ross gave Jessica the bible, she decides he is at fault for his own predicament and opens the gate, killing him. She goes to Jessica's room and watches her in her cell, sighing "what have I done to you, Jessica?" Ross' body is removed from the complex and his belongings are itemized in a way similar to the opening. Jessica parts her lips slightly, revealing she had stolen the spring from Ross' pen and hid it in her mouth. She lets it fall to the floor and starts to grin.

Cast

 * Wilson Wilson - Adeel Akhtar
 * Michael Dugdale - Paul Higgins
 * Arby - Neil Maskell
 * Jessica Hyde - Fiona O'Shaughnessy
 * Geoff Lawson - Alistair Petrie
 * Becky - Alexandra Roach
 * Ian Johnson - Nathan Stewart-Jarrett
 * Grant - Oliver Woollford
 * Tony Bradley - Kevin Eldon
 * Milner - Geraldine James
 * Leah Gorsand - Sylvestra Le Touzel
 * Christian Donaldson - Michael Maloney
 * Anton - Ian McDiarmid
 * Lee - Paul Ready
 * Ross - Allen Corduner

Deaths

 * Four SWAT team soldiers
 * Tony Bradley
 * Ross

Music

 * "The Monarch's Pyramid" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Opening, Grant walks around by himself)
 * "Promised Land Utopia" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Recap, the group flees Donaldson's hideout, credits)
 * "Brainwave Playground" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Arby returns home, Ian searches for Becky, Arby encounters Lee, Lee asks Arby to come back to the Network, Dugdale sits in the Corvadt CEO office/Dugdale returns home)
 * "Fascinating Child" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Ross tells Jessica they need to know the adjustment made to Janus, Jessica is moved to a bigger cell, Milner talks to Jessica)
 * "Over the Rainbow" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Arby and Lee eat together)
 * "Where is Jessica Hyde? Part 2" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Wilson and Milner talk)
 * "I Feel Separated" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Milner meets Arby)
 * "The Network" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Donaldson convinces Becky not to jump, Ian and Grant enter Donaldson's hideout)
 * "Jessica Gets Off" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Ross talks to Jessica about motherhood)
 * "Mind Splitting Lab (Metamorphosis Stage 2)" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Jessica tricks Ross)
 * "Satan's Waltz (Metamorphosis Stage 1)" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Ian finds Becky/Donaldson's group enters his hideout, Donaldson runs from the last SWAT soldier and Arby saves him)
 * "Conspiracy Part 2" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Grant runs from Arby)