“Sleeping Giants” is episode three of season five of The 100.
The episode opens following on from “Eden”. Forces from the transport than landed are searching the woods for Clarke and Madi when they hear screams for help. One of the others has blundered into a trap. Clarke is looking through a rifle scope at him but Madi is uncertain as to whether what they are doing is the right thing. Clarke tells her that the others will take their home, so Madi says that she should not let the man suffer. Clarke does not intend to kill him – yet.
The others, led by the woman, Diyoza, arrive and she tells them all to halt. One refuses, saying that it’s not the army, and Clarke shoots him. It looks like Diyoza – who apparently used to be a SEAL – realised it was a trap. Diyoza identifies Clarke’s position and another uses a very big gun to fire on it. The gun emits what looks like what might be a sonic pulse, hitting Clarke’s position.
Bellamy and the others are heading from the Ark to the craft in orbit. This is a one way trip unless they find fuel on board. The ship, the Eligius 4, which they think might be an asteroid mining ship, is really big and some areas are rotating. Which means that there will be gravity on board. After a less than wonderful docking experience, they disembark to the sound of an alarm klaxon. Which is not remotely worrying.
There’s a sign that says ‘No Inmates Past This Point’ and Monty says that he’s heard rumours of mining ships using prisoners as labour. Expendable labour doing jobs that are too dangerous. At this point, they think that whoever is on the surface are the descendants of the survivors – in the first episode, cryosleep is mentioned.
On the surface, Clarke was injured by the weapon used and leads the others away from Madi, but is captured herself. One comment made, when the former prisoners see Clarke’s blood, suggests that the ship may have even gone extra-solar. In orbit, the others still don’t know that Clarke survived. Those on the ground also have some sort of security measure on the ship, and an alarm was triggered when it was entered.
There is fuel on the Eligius 4, so the others will be able to get down to the ground. Then Echo discovers what Monty identifies as being cryopods. Full cryopods. Bellamy and Raven going through the ship’s manifest on the bridge, discovering that the prisoners were 300 not very people – and at this point they still think it’s ‘were’ not ‘are’ – Echo and the others lacked a means of communicating with them. They get quickly disabused of this, by a recording the ship’s captain made just before a prisoner rebellion killed him. Also by a newly-awakened prisoner who tries to kill them. The still-sleeping prisoners are a form of leverage though.
There’s nothing from the Second Dawn bunker this episode; the previous one, “Red Queen”, showed things were not brilliant in it – and also that everyone was trapped by the tower’s collapse.
So far, the technology seen in The 100 from prior to the end of the world hasn’t really seemed that futuristic. Guns are guns, space flight is simply more common but overall it’s essentially been more of the same. That seen now with the Eligius 4 and some of the references made appear to be at least a step beyond that. Which is odd. The civilisation that built the space stations that made the Ark did not appear capable of building something like Eligius 4.