The Librarians: The Next Chapter – Season 1 Episode 5 Recap & Review

The Review Geek

16-06-2025

And the Memory Crystal
Episode 5 of The Librarians: Next Chapter begins with Vikram and Lysa discussing science and the marvels of what its done for our world. Lysa also brings up an astrophysicist called Roslyn Kirch, and suggests they go and check out her work. Her papers on superclusters of stats (called Quasars) is well-known and she's a big name in the community.
The pair show up to see Rosyln during her big speech… but there's a problem. She winds up having a neurocognitive issue and has to be taken off stage.
While Lysa believes this is simple medical science, Vikram is convinced it's a spell. The 3D map whirs and comes to life back at the Annex when they look into this, with the pendulum pin-pointing the College of Science Observatory as the area most likely responsible. Eventually Lysa concedes, thanks to her AI software, and believes it could well have been magic.
This memory loss appears to be spreading around campus, as during Vikram's rant about smartphones making us more stupid, students and the faculty are also experience memory loss too.
The group split up, with Connor and Lysa go hunting for the magical artifact, with Lysa distracting the teaching assistant while Connor sneaks into the library and grabs some important documents called the Culpepper papers. Culpepper was a 17th Century collector and at one point was in possession of the Crystal of Doctor John Dee.
This is a magical artifact that could well be their memory loss trinket. Unfortunately, these papers are written in Enochian, which is a language only a few people on Earth know how to translate. Thankfully, we have Vikram. Now, the crystal is harmless in necklace form but once its taken out, it has the power to offer a single desired glimpse in the future. The cost, however, is a memory from the past.
The necklace was initially in the London Museum but its recently been stolen, so it must be somewhere inside this College. Unfortunately, Charlie begins to lose her memories while stopping the teaching assistant from crashing his car (which he's forgotten how to drive), and it makes their job that much harder.
With Charlie cautious around Vikram and his involvement with the library, given her memories are gone, Lysa and Connor break into the vault downstairs. Whilst there, they realize that Doctor Stonaris is our culprit, and he's using the telescope with the crystal to consume people's memories. The more people who look through it, the more powerful it becomes.
Dr Stonaris locks the group in the vault though and decides he's going to go down as one of the best brilliant minds ever. Unfortunately, he doesn't realize the danger he's put them all in. The crystal is becoming overcharged, and in doing so, the ripple effects in our reality will be so profound that it won't just cause memories to erase, but the entire timeline as we know it.
With Stonaris pressing ahead with his plan involving the telescope, Vikram decides to sacrifice himself to try and stop him. He steps into the spectral bubble, using his trained brain to stave off the effects of memory loss to stop Stonaris before it's too late. Unfortunately, Stonaris disrupts Vikram's concentration by bringing up Anya, whose memory causes him to lose concentration.
Vikram uses the necklace shielding Stonaris from the memory loss, ripping it from round his neck and throws it up to Connor, who's in the process of stopping the telescope. The group are successful and manage to stop Stonaris. Thankfully, Charlie hasn't faded out of existence either.
With the world saved, the good doctor is thrown into psychiatric care and our team prepare for their next case!
The Episode Review
This episode sees a simple but effective mission diving into the world of memory loss and how important our memories actually are to our wellbeing. However, it does come with some silly scenes too, like Charlie somehow managing to ride a bicycle as fast as a car? I understand the car is still spinning in circles but it's pretty amusing that she was able to do this.
We do get a little rant here about smartphones and how they're counter-productive to our memory, while the main plot has a decent conclusion. The doctor wanted to be famous and I guess now he's become infamous in a way, thrown into lock-up to make sure he doesn't hurt anybody else.
The team do have a nice chemistry now, although it would be good to see them branch out a bit and be tested beyond their capabilities. The earlier arguments between Lysa and Connor seem to have disappeared now too, which is disappointing as it cuts out some of the initial friction within the team. All in all, this is a decent if unremarkable episode.
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