Date of airing: March 26, 1995 (NBC)
Nielsen ratings information: 11.0 million viewers, 6.7/12 in Households
And the series finally went back to its science-fiction roots by ... uhm, teleporting some of the main characters halfway around the planet with the help of spiders. It sounds a bit nutty, but I kind of liked the premise of the metaphysical transportation system, since it continued to establish the mystic powers of the planet, the fact that the entire planet is running on its nervous system, as well as the fact that the Eden Project so far has not even discovered a fraction of what the planet entails and could do with its colony or indigenous residents. If it brought you a transportation system that can only be activated by spiders (wait... what?), as well as a dreamscape that sends dreams from this planet back to Earth (wait... what?), then who knows what else the planet is hiding from humanity, and how the colonists could be able to survive on this planet in the long-term and maybe settle right away, without the need to travel to New Pacifica. Honestly, a human species raised by and dependent on technology could never make it on this planet, because the technology they would bring would eventually destroy the planet or interfere with it. I’m pretty sure the Terrians did not want that to happen at all, which brings me to wonder why the Terrians would even want to metaphysically connect with the humans in the first place, when they could easily fall victim to humankind’s next effort to ruin a planet to the ground.
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| This little Grendler is in love |
Anyway, the backstory behind the premise sounded weird as heck. I guess the writers were excusing all their story twists with the simple explanation of “It’s the planet and it’s got mysterious powers,” which does not help all the time. This time around, it was a bit harder to swallow the writers’ reasoning for the planetary transportation system and how it worked, because I simply could not buy that the spiders were the reasons for the existence of the transportation system, or for the electromagnetic field to get generated in the first place. The reason for polar-opposite spiders to cancel out the field if they happen to be in the same spider web seemed weird and conveniently written as well, and I don’t even know if I should take it as an explanation of what was happening and if there was any form of science behind that explanation. Especially when Devon, Julia, Alonzo, and Danziger could have simply grabbed each spider off the web and waited for the electromagnetic field to get back up, instead of torturing the poor Grendler with one spider bite after another. The Grendler wasn’t necessary to find out which spider was which when the simple notion of the polar-opposite spider being removed from the web already gave you the answer. I get the feeling the script for this episode got stuck in the second draft again.
To explain this plot might be tiresome after one paragraph, so it might be better to give it up and instead go into what else made this episode and what I liked about it. For example, the Grendler that gets bitten by the spider and suddenly felt love and affection for Julia. When the Grendler offered her the flower, I had to laugh and not just because it was an absurd scene about an alien lifeform recognizing its affection for another alien lifeform, and figuring that giving it a flower is a proper sign for showing that affection, when the flower thing is clearly a human tradition. I also liked the premise of Grendlers getting addicted to human blood, and it was probably a good thing they didn’t even know what it was, or they would have been munching on humans much earlier (the penal colony would not have existed, for starters). It’s almost like the Grendlers could turn out to be a danger for the colonists when the beasts find out that the humans have enough blood inside them to last you a couple of days. I wouldn’t be surprised if the season ends with Grendlers screaming “Feed me, Seymour!”
I also liked the little character moments. Julia and Alonzo seemed to be a real couple now, and it seemed okay if you look past the fact that half of this couple does not have any acting chops and therefore were unable to portray a proper level of chemistry to make me hope for their survival. But Julia and Alonzo were holding hands at the beach and then shared a romantic kiss, which means EARTH 2 has a love story going on that kind of feels out of place here. Even Danziger and Devon had a moment they could share, although it was just a realization of the two being the loneliest numbers on the planet – which isn’t true because they have their children with them who make them anything but alone. Then again, they are the only single parents on the planet. Reason enough to hook up one night and make True and Uly step-siblings.
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| It was a worthwhile excursion to the beach. |
But yeah, it does not help that the writers tried to explain a science-fiction premise with the help of some creepy spiders, begging the question of what the producers were thinking about when the script for this episode landed in their mailboxes. All of a sudden they had to get ahold of spiders and their wranglers, and risk finding out whether or not some of the cast were suffering from arachnophobia. And I can imagine some probably did, considering only four of the characters used the transportation system, while the rest of the cast stayed behind and was pretty much removed from the narrative. That didn’t help the story either, as it was wasting a lot of time to try and find a story for the core four to be involved in. Danziger was crawling inside a cave for parts of the episode – a story that could have been removed easily if the writers had found proper stories to work with. Julia was a “hostage” to one of the Grendlers on the other side, which was also a story barely used to its full potential for reasons unknown (possibly because EARTH 2 was still a family-friendly show, so placing the characters in nightmare-ish peril was most likely a no-no). In hindsight, this episode has shown that EARTH 2 was a science-fiction series that repeatedly wasted its potential. And when it used some of that potential, it was explained away by rather nutty explanations.
