History Notes: Legends of Tomorrow Episode 213, "Land of the Lost"

The crew of the Waverider have captured Rip Hunter (ARTHUR DARVILL) in the hopes of restoring him to his former personality, his current one being the product of mental tampering by the Legion of Doom. However, what they did not expect was that Rip still possesses the override codes to Gideon, the ship's AI computer, which easily lets him escape his cell, take back the Longinus Medallion that guides them all to the missing pieces of the Spear of Destiny, and destroy it so that the Legends can never find the final piece before the Legion of Doom gets it and rewrites all reality.

Oh, and he starts up the ship's self-destruct sequence, because every good spaceship has one of those built into it.

Fortunately for the crew, Jefferson (FRANZ DRAMEH) reboots the ship before the self-destruct can complete. Unfortunately, this leaves them without power for a few minutes, forcing them to crash land in the Cretaceous Period. Fortunately, they survive. Unfortunately, the temporal delineator was ripped off the ship. Fortunately, they can track it. Unfortunately, this is the same year Ray (BRANDON ROUTH) was stranded in at the beginning of the season when Rip scattered the Legends to save their lives. That's unfortunate, because while Ray was here he made an enemy out of Gertrude, a mother T-Rex, by stealing one of her eggs to survive on and she's never forgiven him for it -- and guess who's nest the temporal delineator landed in. It's a small continuum.

While Ray is joined by Nate (NICK ZANO) and Amaya (MAISIE RICHARDSON-SELLERS) in retrieving the science-fictiony piece of equipment the ship can't run without, Captain Sara Lance (CAITY LOTZ) and the rest of the crew figure out what to do with the once-again captured Rip. Mick Rory (DOMINIC PURCELL) says they should just get into his head and fix whatever's wrong. Turns out this was done to him a lot by the Time Masters when they turned him into Chronos, and Gideon pipes up with the instructions on how to perform "cognitive intrusion" -- a practice the old Rip thought was barbaric and dangerous. Sara and Jefferson agree to go inside Rip's mind, while Mick and Martin Stein (VICTOR GARBER) stand watch over them.

The inside of Rip's mind just happens to be a shadowy version of the Waverider, populated by Vandal Savage's soldiers as well as evil versions of the Legends, allowing us to see a White Canary matchup (with the evil version wearing the costume once again) and a Jefferson vs. Firestorm battle. However, these are all mental constructs, and cannot be killed (even when they're killed; seriously, they just keep coming back). The only one who can stop them is Rip, and he's cowering in the corner of a cell, terrified of the real Sara Lance. When Sara is captured and locked up with him, she pep talks him into fighting back, and we discover his Neo-like abilities in the Matrix of his mind.

Jefferson meanwhile finds the one ally he never expected to run into: Gideon, in the physical form played by AMY PEMBERTON. Gideon is uncorrupted by the Legion of Doom, she states, because they did not think they needed to corrupt the memories of the ship's AI system. It would seem that the relationship between Rip and Gideon is much deeper than simply Captain and Computer.

Other things of note: Ray tells Nate he's aware that Nate and Amaya are forging a romantic relationship, and cautions him away from it -- not out of jealousy, but because he knows Mari, the modern-day Vixen in Detroit, and that messing with the JSA Vixen's timeline might cause her not to be. We find out that the final piece of the spear is protected by Nate's grandfather, Commander Steel, and that the time period he was thrown into was 1970 -- at NASA. And as we end the episode, we time-jump there to see John Swigert (SEAN MACLEAN) preparing for a physical before he can partake in the Apollo 13 mission. The kicker: his doctor is Eobard Thawne (MATT LETSCHER). Be ready to blast off next week!