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Isabel Sofia[3] Lovelace is the former commanding officer of the Hephaestus, who led a crew there long before the events of the podcast take place, only to eventually return.
Biography[]
Lovelace spent over two years commanding a mission on board the Hephaestus along with the ship's original crew. The mission began as a deep space survey; however, it became a game of survival as crew members became infected with a deadly virus known as Decima. Having realized that command didn't care whether or not they made it home alive, they began to construct a makeshift escape pod by cannibalizing materials from the station, including one of the nuclear reactor engines.
Eventually, the only people remaining alive were Lovelace and "Dr. Selberg," who later turned out to be an alias for Alexander Hilbert, and was, unbeknownst to her, responsible for infecting the Decima victims. After leaving a warning message in the auxiliary systems of the ship, Lovelace was eventually able to escape. She turned on Hilbert once she realized that he was behind the Decima virus, knocking him unconscious and taking the makeshift ship. She put herself in cryosleep and flew off, apparently well-prepared for any number of contingencies. However she never reached Earth, and was presumed dead.
At this point, Isabel Lovelace died, and was recreated as a duplicate by the Dear Listeners.
During the second Hephaestus mission, her duplicate, unaware she wasn't the original Lovelace, was returned to the ship, where she was met with surprise and suspicion by the current crew. The sentiment was mutual. She was able to functionally take command of the ship via a threat of the bomb wired to her heart with the hopes of getting her escape shuttle up and running again to make the trip to Earth. Despite the tense nature of the relationship between herself and the Hephaestus crew, she did save Eiffel's life during a Decima outbreak by donating her blood, thus establishing a tentative truce between herself, Eiffel, and Minkowski. Shortly after Eiffel's departure and return to the ship with the SI-5 crew, control of the Hephaestus was lost to Kepler.
Kepler appointed Lovelace Master-at-Arms on the Hephaestus ship in an effort to bribe her into his good books. However, she was only allowed to control the weaponry of the Hephaestus, not the Urania. During this time period, she was given enough autonomy that she could attempt to break into Kepler's private servers, but ultimately Jacobi and Maxwell sabotaged this effort.
Lovelace continued in her role as Master-at-Arms, however, upon discovering the secret room in the Hephaestus which had been planned for Hilbert, she realized that she could not trust Goddard Futuristics and planned a mutiny with Hilbert to take place shortly before the contact event, ultimately including Minkowski, Eiffel, and Hera in this mutiny as well. The plan failed, and she was shot by Kepler, and considered dead by the crew.
Shortly thereafter, during the contact event, her duplicate body was able to regenerate, after Kepler and Jacobi had been neutralized and captured. Soon after this, when conscious, Lovelace figures out that she is, in fact, a duplicate and not the original Isabel Lovelace. Later, through her, the Dear Listeners were able to communicate to the Hephaestus crew.
Lovelace took on the position of captain of the ship again, and discovered that she had no way to control the contact with the Dear Listeners, and no way to understand their message. However, Minkowski continued to relinquish control over the ship to her, until shortly before the arrival of Cutter and the crew of the Sol. When Cutter attempted to put her through the procedure known as "processing," her physical makeup destroyed the machine, and she remained unaffected, but captured.
The blood that she had given to Eiffel allowed him to slowly throw off the effects of Pryce's work, and through this mechanism they were able to free Jacobi and Minkowski as well. The four of them were able to escape, setting up bombs over the Hephaestus, and Lovelace and Jacobi guided Eiffel and Minkowski through the Sol in order to avoid the alarm system until they could take over the Sol and escape. Lovelace and Jacobi were captured, however, by Riemann, before Eiffel and Minkowski could complete their objective.
Cutter used Lovelace to discuss the negotiations of a hostage situation between him, Eiffel and Minkowski. She spoke on his behalf to Kepler, who was speaking on behalf of Eiffel and Minkowski, who both refused to work with Cutter. After this, Cutter traded the crew's freedom to return to Earth on the Sol for Kepler and Pryce. During this exchange, Cutter shot Jacobi in the leg. Lovelace suspected that Cutter had bugged the bullet to listen to them in case the team decided to retaliate, and discussed a false plan out loud, while writing the actual plan down. This gave them a significant advantage when infiltrating the Hephaestus.
Lovelace and Minkowski confront Cutter. Cutter can use the psi-wave regulator to control Lovelace because she is a duplicate and uses it to have Lovelace shoot Minkowski, which she does, in the gut. While Minkowski bleeds out, Lovelace manages to gain a semblance of control and points the gun at Cutter, distracting him from Minkowski shooting him with a harpoon. Together, they go to the room that holds Pryce and Eiffel. Hera informs them that they had to wipe both of their minds to stop Cutter's plan.
Relationships[]
She appears to have been on a relatively friendly basis with much of her own crew, prior to their deaths. The exception to this was the communications officer, Sam Lambert, whom she considered boring and over-serious, but eventually came to value as a friend. (Their relationship appears to be an intentional mimic/inverse of Doug Eiffel and Renée Minkowski's.) She notably also trusted and valued Selberg, before discovering his betrayal.
Before her actual appearance, Eiffel loved Lovelace's humorous manner that he had heard in her audio logs and had already held her in high regard, much to Minkowski's disagreement. When Lovelace made her first in-person appearance, Eiffel was the one who talked Minkowski and Lovelace into lowering their weapons. They became scared and suspicious of Lovelace, and planned to conspire against her to stop her plan of destroying the Hephaestus. Lovelace saw through Eiffel's increased idiotic and lazy demeanour, suspecting their plans to revolt. She hadn't trusted Eiffel when he said they weren't planning anything (This is one of his most convincing lies ever told in the series, but ironically is one that isn't believed.).
Right after Minkowski fixed the ship with Lovelace and they were preparing to leave, Eiffel succumbed to a Decima outbreak. During Eiffel's examination, Minkowski and Lovelace butted heads over Lovelace's trivial interrogating while Hilbert was trying to help Eiffel, which caused Minkowski to snap and yell at her to leave. She did, and was confronted by Hera about her actions. Lovelace reflected on her decisions and felt guilt over how she had been dealing with the crew, as well as a renewed sense of concern for her teammates. She later returned to Hilbert's lab when she heard of Eiffel's deteriorating condition. She saved his life with a blood transfusion and he became indebted to her. Lovelace's relationship with Eiffel and the crew began to become a positive one in this moment.
Eiffel and Lovelace were supposed to fly the VX3 ship to move the Hephaestus out of range for Wolf 359's decaying orbit, but Lovelace was horribly injured while protecting Minkowski. Eiffel continued on anyway, transferring any controls he could to Hera and Minkowski since he was without an experienced pilot. After successfully saving the Hephaestus, the VX3 had overheated during the move and the instability of the ship tore it from the docking port, sending Eiffel into deep space at a slow rate, enough to remain close to orbit, however. After the de-attachment and Hephaestus's stability is achieved, Lovelace flatlines. She is revived by Hilbert, but this was enough to trigger the Dead Man Switch connected to the explosives in the ship, and Lovelace's ship explodes. Eiffel flies out of the orbit of Wolf 359 and is lost into deep space for over 200 days, before being rescued by SI-5. Once reunited with Hephaestus, Lovelace grew closer with Eiffel and was concerned about him after hearing small mentions of his hardships alone in deep space. Lovelace the original crew and trusts Eiffel and Minkowski greatly. Over the course of Kepler's rule, they grew to be each other's confidants and plan a coup against SI-5 together. Eiffel and Lovelace were captured by Kepler and he began making threats to kill one of them if Minkowski didn't surrender. He began a trivial game of "Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe" and was about to land his gun on Eiffel when Lovelace stepped in. She taunted Kepler into leaving Eiffel alone and focusing on her. He threatened to shoot Lovelace if Minkowski doesn't give up, and held up his end of the bargain, shooting Lovelace in the head.
When Lovelace came back to life during the funeral procession and when she became a conduit for the Listeners, Eiffel later admits that he is afraid of her now, and tries to remember her as "the badass, funny, beyond-cool person [she is]", but Kepler's words of who she is pop into his head and he can't stop it; he feels bad about it. After this, Eiffel has distanced himself from her, not treating her the same as he had, more like a stranger that he didn't really love as deeply as the Lovelace from before. He keeps his distance from personal conversations with her and even goes as far as to lie and manipulate her to get what he wants. Eiffel tells her that Kepler had said that an increase in norepinephrine would allow Lovelace to connect to the Listeners better. (this one was the other of Eiffel's convincing lies, which Lovelace actually believed). Lovelace agrees to try it out, and lets herself be strapped to the table to keep her steady. After that, Eiffel injects himself with a syringe full of a deadly and fast-acting toxin that he claimed was norepinephrine. By putting Eiffel's life at risk and Lovelace being unable to help him, the Listeners stepped in and saved him. Lovelace was infuriated at Eiffel and later called him out on his troubling and dangerous behavior. He didn't take her seriously at first, stating any insults she thinks he said were just jokes, until he was also confronted by Hera and later Minkowski about his repeated patterns that he'd been blind to. Eiffel then figured the close friendship between him and Lovelace was finally broken beyond repair, along with his other friends. He apologized for his behavior and isolated himself from the rest of the team and limited his carefree behavior to focus on contacting the Listeners better. When Hera noticed that Eiffel hadn't made a single pop culture reference in an entire week, and when it was mentioned that there were days that nobody saw Eiffel at all, Lovelace and the crew became concerned. When confronted on it, he begged them to just drop it. Lovelace realized that Eiffel was internalizing what they had said to him and figured that limiting his time with them would limit the amount of things he could say that could hurt Lovelace and his friends. They talked to Eiffel and told him that he was still very much their friend, and that he should just be consciously trying to not make the same mistakes in the future. Eiffel and Lovelace become good friends again, and he doesn't doubt or fear her in such extremes anymore.
At the end of the series, Eiffel says that "whoever [she] thought Isabel Lovelace was, [she] saved this crew." He thanks her and calls her the bravest person he knew. Lovelace still considers Eiffel her friend, and gets him all of his old audio logs to listen to. She likes this new Eiffel, and hopes these logs help him learn about who he was. Eiffel can then decide if he likes this person from the recordings and wants to be like them, be something new, or, like Lovelace, become a mix of the two. She's supportive of whatever path Eiffel will choose to follow.
Lovelace and Minkowski particularly have a special relationship, in turns stepping down from command and relinquishing it to the other during times they do not feel they are up to the task.
Her relationship with Colonel Kepler is tense in the beginning. Kepler had initially told Hilbert that Lovelace's ship fell into the star, and so Lovelace believed that Kepler had initially lied to Hilbert--however, it turned out that Lovelace's original ship and body had fallen into the star. Kepler had, however, been lying about how much he knew about Lovelace's disappearance and return, the information that he had access to only coming to light after the contact event where Lovelace displayed the ability to interface for the Dear Listeners. After Cutter's takeover, Lovelace and Kepler share a common enemy: Goddard Futuristics.
Lovelace and Jacobi seemed to be closer than any of the other relationships between the two teams under Kepler's leadership. During their times before her mutiny, they didn't seem to argue and bicker often. They worked well together, have been shown to hold casual conversation with Jacobi never bugging or annoying Lovelace. As well, they hold a nice rapport during this time, as shown in "Long Story Short", and "Time to Kill", where Lovelace believes the Jacobi inside the ship is the real Jacobi, and sabotages the door to stop Eiffel and Maxwell from letting in a fake. After the revolt against Kepler, they argue much more often, as does everyone else. While captured together by Cutter, they re-establish a bond and Jacobi opens up about himself a bit to only her (he fancies the men-folk). At the end of the series, they go back to Earth together.
Trivia[]
- Her surname is most likely a reference to Ada Lovelace, who is commonly cited as the first computer programmer (first published program circa 1843).
Image Gallery[]
External links[]
- Character biography from wolf359.fm
- Lovelace - Greensboro, character playlist by wolf359radio