Date of airing: December 18, 1994 (NBC)
Nielsen ratings information: 13.7 million viewers, 9.0/15 in Households
This episode had a sizable moral compass with some confusing moments within the narrative, as I still ended up confused over Julia’s real “job” with the secret council on the other side of the planet, and what the real purpose of Terry O’Quinn’s character is, and whether or not this was supposed to prepare a violent conflict between the settlers and a so far unknown group of people. The question remains why humans wanted to control the planet, and if Project Eden was something of a Trojan Horse by the mysterious group (led by O’Quinn’s character) in the background to invade the planet and get rid of the Terrians that way. And the question remains if the secret council even knows what is going on with the settlers and what they have been going through.
After all, you just need to look at Uly and his development to maybe ask yourself if this planet and the Terrians aren’t just a little bit special and don’t deserve to be invaded in the classical sense of the word. A kid with the so-called Syndrome (the writers couldn’t come up with a fictional medical-sounding sickness) lands on this planet, and it took him five weeks to become perfectly healthy and something of an unwilling spokeskid for the Terrians (although Alonzo is doing the talking in this case). And now that Uly’s DNA seems to be changing and the writers kickstarted an evolutionary process reminiscing of the X-Men comics, there is only a question of time that the unknown group of potential villains will rethink their big mission. Maybe what they need to do is not try and kill the Terrians and instead go for the child?
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| The Terrian has a heart to give. |
I liked that Julia was not being messed with during this hour. The writers teased her to become a villain in the previous episodes, but here she had to make up her mind and she is possibly on the settlers’ side from here on out. It didn’t help that she initially wanted to open up Uly to check if he was, in fact, changing physically, but she found the heart within her (by having been shown a literal heart by the weird special effects mixture of Alonzo and a Terrian) and she stopped the procedure because she saw the truth in what she was doing. Let’s just not remember that Julia wasn’t even weirded out in the slightest by the sight of Alonzo with a beating heart in his hands. I was certainly confused about that scene because I couldn’t figure out if Julia was having a vision or if a Terrian really was standing in front of her with a beating human heart in its hand to tell her that Uly is the center of their existence (and everyone else’s). But I guess when you deal with extraterrestrials and start to get into the esoteric of things, you don’t need to go into the explanation of certain scenes.
The general idea of the premise sounded great, however. If Uly is supposed to be the first human to go through this particular evolutionary change, then he just became a more important member of human society on this planet, which means that he might even have to be protected by everyone around him. Whenever the secret council decides to close the physical distance between them and the Eden Project, Uly needs all the help he can get to keep himself safe – probably not just by his mother and her new best friends, but maybe even by the Terrians. If this were a The CW science-fiction show from 2020, a battle between the dozen-or-so Eden Project members plus some Terrians against the secret council members on the other side of the planet would have filled the entire season finale with action set pieces, similar to how THE 100 did it. But with EARTH 2 being a mid-1990s show on a broadcast network, there was no chance of a violent action scene to be found here. Especially in a show that was produced to be and advertised as a family adventure series, even if it had a little too much drama in it at times.
For example, Morgan and Bess’s story. While he continued to be an intriguing character (it’s almost like he turned out to be the best character of the show after eight episodes), the story of his lapsed marriage to Bess didn’t seem like a story you would normally find in a family-oriented adventure show. His behavior is too obscure at times for the entire TV-watching family to understand what he is currently doing, and the marriage thing felt like it was an attempt at bringing future-Earth society into the plot to establish what kind of rules humankind was living under (which were even more useless here, since the Eden Project weren’t forced any longer to live by those rules). Morgan might have not been involved in the main storyline of the episode, but I like the change the character has gone through, as he became less of an annoying man and more like someone who is dealing with the chaos of being stranded on an alien planet and having to fight for what he loves, without actually knowing how to fight. Again, if this had been the aforementioned The CW show, Morgan would have been the nerdy-type character, who could be a happy person if he were to open up more to his friends and the people he loves. And he would have been portrayed by a mid-20s actor with muscles and tattoos and pretty, shoulder-length hair, just to bring over the fact that he can indeed fight for those he loves.
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| In the virtual world, love and jazz are still a thing. |
But on EARTH 2, Morgan is a different type of character: He is scared to open up to Bess, he is scared of losing her, and he is definitely not someone you can put a weapon in his hands to fight for his survival. That is why I adored the scene of Bess discovering Morgan during his moment with Bess’s father in the virtual reality, and I adored the entire story some more when they remarried at the end. The wedding reception in the virtual reality world was especially touching. It’s almost like the characters were given a moment to pause and just enjoy life as they have known it. A bright and large ballroom, some nice, classical music, dancing... Happiness was created, which is usually a sign for darkness to come around the corner in the following episode.
