Date of airing: January 8, 1995 (NBC)
Nielsen ratings information: 18.8 million viewers, 11.5/17 in Households
This was an unusual episode for the series. I can’t quite describe what may have happened behind the cameras, but maybe the writers and producers realized that the initial premise of EARTH 2 – a colony of humans on a strange planet, trying to survive – might have become boring after a handful of episodes, and now they were trying to spice up and change the show with unique visuals and story choices. The greatest example would be the virtual reality glasses the characters are wearing to forget for a moment that they are on a weird planet – its usage worked well in the previous episode, with the wedding reception finding joy and peace during a dance with jazz music, and it had a great idea by putting True and Uly in a game of sorts, letting them essentially go wild on a children’s playground, only with that playground looking like a cheap knockoff of the amusement park in WESTWORLD.
I’m not sure that fictional tech was envisioned during the creative phase of the series, but it certainly allowed the producers to relocate the cast to a standing set or a soundstage, in case the production under the New Mexico sky was getting too expensive as time went on. And it looks like it became expensive, hence parts of the episode were set in the darkroom of virtual reality, in tents, and under trees. Plus, barely any guest stars. Only Terry O’Quinn was in this episode, but he probably got a lucrative recurring deal, so maybe that ended up becoming an advantage for production to keep the budget down. Even more so now, after the series has proven to not be a magnet for new viewers on Sunday evenings.
It was a great episode, however, because of the way Julia changed as a character, and how her sudden (but at least explained) erratic behavior was bringing the Eden Project into danger. I loved that she was finally caught in her VR sessions with Reilly, and I loved that Bess was a cold-hearted woman out for some real answers, maybe even revenge, if she took Julia out of the tent to beat her up after her husband’s disappearance. The entire story, with Julia injecting herself with modified Terrian DNA and then becoming a problem for the group, threatening their safety, is reminiscent of drug-related storylines, with a character being addicted enough to possibly harm their friends and family. Julia injected something into her body, her behavior started to be more erratic, and then she risked the lives of others – if this episode wasn’t a science-fiction parable of drug use and addiction, then I don’t know what is.
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| This is not what it looks like. |
If you take away the parable and just see the episode for its story, Julia’s conflict between her loyalty to the council and her commitment to the Eden Project (as their one and only doctor) made for good drama, even though it seems a bit absurd that she is the only one in the group with medical experience, almost making her invaluable (which begs the question why the group left her behind to fend for herself). Then again, I appreciated the ending of Julia being left behind, because it almost promises excitement in her story for the next episode – how is she going to survive all by herself, and what will she find on this planet when not being dragged down by an entire group? Not that I’m expecting her to find a power cable buried in sand and leading into the ocean where she will find a secret research station, but you never know.
Besides, this episode did a really good thing by focusing entirely on Julia and not wasting time with a B plot. One might have thought the B plot would be about the kids (since the episode started with them in the virtual Wild West) or maybe even Morgan, whose hours tied to a tree were probably miserable (I assume he wasn’t attacked by a creepy animal), but no, this was all about Julia and her speedy descent into madness and craziness. As if the writers realized they needed time to put logic and reasoning in her story, so they gave it all the pages. These 47 minutes almost felt like two hours, since so much was happening with Julia. For a 1990s TV drama with only an A plot, a lot of things happened. I consider this great writing.
But story-wise, this episode delivered a lot of questions. I have no idea how True was able to get into the VR with Julia and Reilly in it, when Julia always had to use the special “USB device” to connect to Reilly’s VR (plus, no password protection?). Also, I have no idea why Julia didn’t notice she was in a VR during her fight with Devon. In fact, I found it quite convenient that you can convince a person that what happens is real when all of it is fake. As if EARTH 2 just developed the first draft of the Matrix. And I have no idea what happened physically between Julia and Devon in the tent when both of them were fighting each other in the virtual world. Were they fighting in the tent as well? I ask the question because it almost seemed obvious that True and Uly weren’t physically doing anything in their Wild West virtual reality at the start of the episode, since they were sitting on the vehicle. But Devon was gasping for air after her virtual fall off the virtual cliff, proving that she was physically exhausted. I smell inconsistencies, which are nothing new in broadcast network science-fiction television.
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| Devon's stuntwoman falls to her death. |
Also, I have some story questions as well: Did Julia go through a transformation, as she called it, or were her symptoms just a reaction to Uly’s Terrian DNA? Because I can’t believe that this might be happening, since it was Uly who was considered special by everyone, especially the Terrians. It shouldn’t be this easy for someone to take some of Uly’s blood or bone marrow fluids, just to take the kid’s place in the hierarchy of the Terrians’ world. If it was so simple for Julia to regenerate Uly’s DNA and inject it into herself and other people, no one would be special and Uly would be useless. Granted, child characters in science-fiction are generally useless, and the writers were surely trying to find a way to not focus too much on Uly and True, but story-wise, this development has been quite convenient to give attention to the adults in the room and forget about the kids.
And finally, I have to say that Alonzo was a huge dick in this episode. He was screaming at Julia, just because she didn’t have any answers to his questions, so all I wanted was to slap him left and right. That was a typical scene of typical male entitlement. Written by two men, and directed by a man. Yeah, that seems to happen all the time.
