| Metamorphosis | Credits | Transcript | Images |
"Metamorphosis" is the fourteenth episode of the third season of Sanctuary, and the fortieth episode overall in the series.
Synopsis[]
Will Zimmerman is uncharacteristically absent from the morning team meeting. His reason for not attending has him literally climbing the walls.
Plot[]
Cold Open[]
Will Zimmerman wakes up when Kate Freelander summons him to the morning staff meeting. He is distraught and arrives late for the meeting, but the matter is soon forgotten when the team are startled by his face.
He is brought down to an isolation room, where Helen Magnus examines him, saying that he has "something" on his face. Will asks if he can see it; Henry Foss hands him a mirror, which shows that the skin on his cheek is changing into something seemingly scaly, perhaps reptilian.
Act I[]
Some time later, Helen Magnus returns to the isolation room, informing Will Zimmerman (who's picking at the placoid skin on his face with a tweezer) that the DNA tests have returned inconclusive results. She asks him if he did anything unusual in the past week, but he cannot remember anything out-of-the-ordinary by Sanctuary standards. Magnus states that more tests are needed to be conducted, and in the meantime, Will has a lot of reports to work on.
As Will walks around in the Sanctuary, he overhears the rest of the team talking about him in the small weapons lab. They initially try to cover up their true conversation by poorly deflecting to it being about baseball instead. Will catches them in a lie and they apologize. To create some levity, Kate then mocks him with the catchphrase from GEICO auto insurance. The room erupts in laughter.
Will finds Magnus down in a lab. He comments about her eating a snack down here being a bad sign, however Magnus replies that it's hardly a reliable indicator. She then informs him that she has found spores from some sort of plant-animal hybrid creature that's changing his DNA one cell at a time and that she is working on an antiviral flush to kill the spores.
The next morning, Will wakes up to find his body even more transformed; having spread to his hands, arms, and feet. After finding his fingers somewhat sticky, on a hunch he walks to the bedroom wall and easily climbs up to the ceiling like a gecko. Kate Freelander arrives with breakfast, and is shocked to find him hanging from the ceiling; causing her to drop the tray carrying scrambled eggs. Will then falls back down to the floor.
Down in the isolation room, Magnus examines Will's hands. This new development puts her back at square one, as it ruled out her theory of the spores being from an offshoot of the aquatic frilled coral rat. She then injects him with a mild antimetabolite and instructs him to inform her of any changes in his physiology. Will notices and questions the shift in her behavior. She tells him not to worry, but he's not convinced.
Up in his bedroom, Will is playing with a baseball as Henry Foss barges in with a job for Will to do: he's asked to change a light bulb on a high-hanging chandelier in the foyer.
After arriving in the foyer, Will climbs up the wall nearby to the staircase. As he's delighting in his new 'spiderman-like' abilities, he quickly finds the sunlight streaming through the window to be far too bright. As the sunlight hits his hands, it causes him a lot of pain. He loses adhesion and falls to the floor. Henry calls out for help as Will loses consciousness.
Will wakes up in the isolation room. Magnus tells him that the scaling on his body and hardened bone structure protected him from more serious injury. When Will notices the horrific state of his bandaged arms (his hands having erupted in white boils where they were burnt by the sunlight), Magnus explains that he has developed a sensitivity against ultraviolet light.
The team covers some of the Sanctuary's hallway windows with black fabric to block out direct sunlight. Will is now protected as he travels between his bedroom, his office, and the elevator. Magnus arrives to inform Will and the rest of the team of her discovery that the creature that infected Will is in fact from Hollow Earth.
Act II[]
Down in a lab, Helen Magnus tells the team that Will Zimmerman picked up a spore from a cillobar, a predatory plant-animal hybrid creature native to Hollow Earth. To get help from her father about a treatment, Magnus orders Henry Foss to find a way to get in touch with Ranna Seneschal, the leader of the Hollow Earth city of Praxis.
Kate Freelander comes to see Will in his office. He's currently sitting at his desk filing reports. She asks how he's doing and he updates her that his eyes hurt and shows her that on his right hand his ring and pinky fingers have fused together a couple hours ago. Will can sense that Kate wants to talk to him about something, but she's uncomfortable addressing it as she doesn't want to make Will feel even worse. At his insistence, Kate eventually tells him that Abby Corrigan called and asked about him. Will is not sure if he wants his girlfriend to see him in his current condition. Kate promises to take care of it.
Will visits Henry in the small weapons lab as Henry tries to figure out a way to send a signal to Hollow Earth. Magnus interrupts with a report of an abnormal (a terrakopolus) on the loose in Trench Park and orders Henry to get the retrieval van ready. She asks Will to stay behind to look after the facility.
Limited to the Sanctuary grounds, Will sits at his office desk frustrated that he cannot join missions anymore. Bigfoot walks in and empathizes. He then asks Will to follow him.
Bigfoot has invited Will to a secret room; his private refuge where he refines whiskey. Soon, the two are drinking together with the Two Faced Guy. Bigfoot and Two Faced Guy eventually bring to light and tell Will how frustrating it can be for when the team returns and they have to listen to the team go on and on recounting how spectacular their latest takedown was in minuet detail.
Will does not believe this happens until he finds himself just afterwards in the small weapons lab having to experience Henry and Kate Freelander enthusiastically bragging about the adventure he just missed out on.
It's the next morning and Will's metamorphosis has continued to progress. He is now at ease climbing up and down the walls of his bedroom. Kate arrives with a tray of food (a bowl of ravioli in a tomato-based sauce along with a plate of sliced baguette bread and a cup of coffee); she's worried about him as Henry said that Will didn't eat dinner, so she brought it to him. She volunteers to feed him because he can no longer control the grip of his hands with his now large talons. As he eats with her assistance, he thanks her.
In Magnus's study, Henry is showing Magnus that he has found a way to send a message to Praxis. He sends the message: "It's Henry from Sanctuary on the planet's surface. We need your help and it's urgent. We have an infection from a Cillobar that we believe was picked up on our vacation to Praxis. We are transmitting on frequencies 204.31EHz & 3.1531uHz using the following algorithm (attached). Please respond ASAP with any information." To their surprise, they receive an answer almost instantaneously, reading: "No cure for Cillobar infection. High risk for further exposure. Terminate subject immediately." Henry writes back: "Subject is Will. Please advise." Another response message is received, this time shrouded in static interference. The message reads: "Forbidden communication under_ Senate Authority. Kill subject immediately."
Act III[]
Walking on the ceiling and eavesdropping, Will overhears Magnus and Bigfoot discussing his case where Magnus is frustratingly losing hope. Later on, he asks Magnus to dial a number for him on the phone, and leaves a message on his father's answering machine, telling him to get in contact with Magnus when he receives the message. He then looks at his reflection on his computer screen: by now, he looks almost completely reptilian and increasingly aggressive .
Will has a dream in which he chases himself, unchanged, through the Sanctuary and ends up throwing himself off from the highest tower into the sea. When he wakes up, he panics, realizing that he has lost the ability to speak, now only managing grunts. Magnus sedates him. When he wakes up again, he is even more agitated, and attacks Kate injuring her arm. Before he can hurt anyone else further, Bigfoot overwhelms him. The team puts Will in a security cell.
Act IV[]
Henry comes to see Kate, who tries to distract herself by doing some filing. She tells him that she has not lost anyone important in a long time, and that she does not know how to deal with it.
Magnus is in the lab when Bigfoot arrives and tells her that she must accept the fact that they have lost Will. She angrily orders him to leave her alone, to which he replies that she should stop "putting up a show". This remark gives Magnus an idea: she tells Henry to put up Ranna's message again. They notice the underscore in the message, and realize that Ranna must have tried to send them another message that the Senate would not approve of. They replay the interference sent with the message, they'd noticed previously; it turns out to be the word "Gooban", written in Morse code.
The data Nikola Tesla extracted from the holographic map reveals that Gooban was a scientist who hundreds of years ago managed to resurrect a dead mushroom species. Magnus thinks that by using his technique with a sample of Will's original DNA, she can cure him.
Henry and Kate go to get Will, but they only find a hole in the wall of his cell. They enter, but Will actually hides on the ceiling attacking them once they are in his reach. When Magnus and Bigfoot arrive, he is long gone.
Act V[]
The team goes hunting for Will, and Magnus makes it clear that if they are unable to capture him, they must be prepared to kill him in order to protect Old City from further contamination. They spread out, and Magnus eventually comes upon Will in a warehouse. He attacks her, but she is able to sedate him just in time.
When Will wakes up several days later, he is on the path to full recovery. He tells her how hard it was to see them all slip away. However, he points out that the super strength or the ability to climb up walls could be useful, but Magnus just walks away on the notion.
Cast[]
| Series regulars |
|---|
| Featuring |
| Uncredited |
|
| Mentioned |
|
Quotes[]
| MAGNUS: There you are. How do you feel? WILL: My, ugh, my throat hurts. MAGNUS: It's only been a few days. It'll take a while before your recovery is complete. On the positive side, this will do wonders for your Bruce Willis impression. WILL: Jokes... That's a good sign. |
Extras[]
- This episode has a DVD commentary track. Commentators: Robin Dunne, and Andy Mikita.
Notes[]
- Chronology: This episode occurs anywhere within a time frame up to at most six months after Episode 3x10 - "The Hollow Men". Six months is the lifespan of viable cillobar spores outside of a host. It is unknown when the creature had bloomed before Will Zimmerman picked up the spores and or if Will got infected during his time in Hollow Earth; having a mutation latency factor.
- Speculation: Due to Will Zimmerman not mutating immediately following "The Hollow Men", it's assumed Will had picked up the spores on some of his clothing, then when he returned back to the Old City Sanctuary, he had transferred them onto an object nearby in his bedroom. Some time later, he touched the infected object (or another contaminated object that had touched it, such as i.e. clothing), transferring the spores to his body; infecting himself.
- Trivia: This episode has minimal cast, no extras, and uses pre-existing sets and props, qualifying it as a quick and cheap bottle episode; something that frees up resources for use on something else. Following the special effect heavy Hollow Earth story arc, Metamorphosis was designed to be a cost-cutting episode, as the series creators were afraid of running out of money at that point. The premise is based on the book "The Metamorphosis" by Kafka.
- Trivia: Much of the episode is filmed from Will Zimmerman's first person perspective. The creators compared the technique to the film "Cloverfield", and expect the fans to be divided about it.[1]
- Trivia: The snack Helen Magnus is seen eating at her lab station is a plate of: thin-sliced red and green apples, whole wheat crackers, and an unknown thin-sliced rectangular white-colored type of cheese.
- Character Error: In the real-world, eating at a laboratory station or in a laboratory setting at all is usually forbidden by OSHA safety rules to help prevent accidental ingestion of, contamination of, or infection from hazardous lab materials such as biological samples and chemicals.
- Character Error: Helen Magnus says they couldn't find the creature's DNA in the database because it wasn't from "Earth", but from "Hollow Earth". That is an obvious contradiction, as "Hollow Earth" is just another part of the planet, which was previously undiscovered.
- Reference: "Marcus Welby, M.D." (1969) (TV Series) - Will Zimmerman accuses Helen Magnus of "going all Marcus Welby on him".
- Trivia: This episode establishes Will's bedroom to be on the same residential area floor level as his office. Due to Will taking an elevator to get to Magnus's study in the beginning of the episode, plus Helen Magnus's comment in Episode 4x09 - "Chimera" about being "down a level" from her study, it places this floor on the level just below Magnus's study.
Gallery[]
References[]
- "Metamorphosis" on The Internet Movie Database
- Watch "Metamorphosis" on Vudu
- "Metamorphosis" on Wikipedia
| ● Sanctuary ● Season 3 ● |
|---|
| ● 01 Kali, Part III ● 02 Firewall ● 03 Bank Job ● 04 Trail of Blood ● 05 Hero II: Broken Arrow ● 06 Animus ● 07 Breach ● 08 For King and Country ● 09 Vigilante ● 10 The Hollow Men ● 11 Pax Romana ● 12 Hangover ● 13 One Night ● 14 Metamorphosis ● 15 Wingman ● 16 Awakening ● 17 Normandy ● 18 Carentan ● 19 Out of the Blue ● 20 Into the Black ● |
| Story Arc : Hollow Earth |
|---|
| ● 3x01 Kali, Part III ● 3x02 Firewall ● 3x06 Animus ● 3x07 Breach ● 3x08 For King and Country ● 3x09 Vigilante ● 3x10 The Hollow Men ● 3x11 Pax Romana ● 3x14 Metamorphosis ● 3x19 Out of the Blue ● 3x20 Into the Black ● 4x02 Uprising ● |