Date of airing: June 4, 1995 (NBC)
Nielsen ratings information: 8.4 million viewers, 6.1/11 in Households
written by: Carl Cramer
directed by: Jim Charleston
“Bess, you made Spring.”
I laughed a little at that quote, because it sounded so dumb at first. But then I realized the deeper meaning of the episode’s premise, and I may have figured out that this planet’s seasonal approach is not being defined by its position in its solar system, or closeness to its star, but by plant vegetation. It is not the planet’s star and the planet’s distance to it that is regulating the temperature on this godforsaken rock, but it is the fact that lifeforms carry plant pollen from one place to another to guarantee a geyser-type eruption that creates enough humidity to cause heat. Granted, the visual effects for that looked incredibly cheap and approached like it had to be done in less than 24 hours (pay your VFX artists properly, and give them the time needed to create the effects!), but the scientific mind within me was quite happy about this rather accidental approach to explaining how climate works on this fictional planet, and even sounding somewhat reasonable, in case you do not want to go too deep into planet/star relationships in your science-fiction premise. Plus, EARTH 2 has always been weird about the mystical part of the planet, that a pollen’s travel from point A to B causing climate is not even the most absurd part of the series. I think that still belongs to the polar-opposite spiders that create a portal between opposite sides of the planet.
This episode felt like another STAR TREK-esque episode a third of the way through, when Julia revealed that Bess might be pregnant, because apparently, it is not possible for Julia to doctor up a real pregnancy test and have Bess pee on it to be certain (or just do a blood test). In the future of EARTH 2, you confuse getting infected by pollen for pregnancy. For a moment I was thinking if it might be possible for Bess and Danziger to bear the flowers they inhaled, and that is what would kill them at the end, but in the end, the writers could not just kill off two characters like that, even though at the time of writing this episode, it must have been obvious to everyone involved that EARTH 2 would not make it past the first season also, this episode was the final one that aired). Still, the planet’s mystery felt like it came straight out of Gene Roddenberry’s idea book, because alien planets in science-fiction television can never be just normal or expectant – they always need to be creepy and devoid of any science and physics. It makes for good television every once in a while, but EARTH 2 tried so hard to be a grounded and dramatic show, always focused on its characters, that it makes these kinds of episodes feel like they do not belong.
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| Bess is a prisoner now. |
Anyway, this was another Bess-centric episode, and with the previous Bess-centric episode ("Natural Born Grendlers," the one with the geolock she traded with the Grendler), I got the feeling that NBC was pre-empting both Bess-centric episodes, putting them after the official TV season has ended, because the NBC suits probably disliked Rebecca Gayheart for some reason, or they could not figure out why Bess was the character leading these episodes when she looked and felt like a supporting character only, undeserving of taking the lead in various episodes. Maybe NBC asked themselves why an episode like this was not given to a character like Danziger or Alonzo, and if they thought that Gayheart did not have enough acting chops to carry an episode all by herself, hence pre-empting both episodes and scheduling them during the first weeks' post-season. A thought like that could make a person like me paranoid about stuff like this, because it cannot be a coincidence that Bess, a main character who normally did not get anything to do in the series (because her character was never really included in the Eden Project) gets cut out of the season by NBC like that. Maybe the network thought that Bess was not enough of a main character to warrant character-centric episodes, and the executives were just wondering why a non-main character was front and center? Somebody, please explain this to me.
Okay, back to the episode. I actually liked it, if I look past the general absurdity of the story, because I appreciated that Morgan was putting all the trust in the world into his wife, believing in what she had to say about the journey up North, and not believing in the hype that the organism in her body might be controlling her. I loved the moment of him deciding to leave the gear behind and follow Bess, and I loved that he wanted to continue on the journey after Bess collapsed, essentially taking over for her (because a man still had to save the world at the end). I loved the scene of Alonzo and Julia trying to stop Bess and Morgan before they fell into the creepy hole that found no explanation for its existence at all (except for it to be there to accept the pollen and spit out a chemical reaction to it), and, yeah, I kind of loved the group sitting there, enjoying the literal eruption of spring (which could be confused with natural terraforming).
The backstory of the plant and the hole of seasons intrigued me as well: Was this seemingly one and only hole deciding about seasons on the planet, and it gave you the answer whether or not it was winter or spring? Does it mean when it is not puking out all the colorful stuff, it is super cold, while it gets humidly warm when it vomits out a rainbow of gases? And what happens when the host of the pollen did not manage to reach the hole? Would it stay winter for longer because of it? And if the planet wanted to stay warm (or it would not have created this kind of circle of life in the first place), why not create more than one hole? Yes, I am asking a lot of questions here and I would have loved to get some clear answers, but I am a bit surprised that the episode created a couple of thought processes in my mind. Suddenly I may know a whole lot more about the seasons on this planet than the writers may have intended.
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| Love + Death + Plants |
Of course, the general premise of the episode makes no sense. It seemed too easy for Julia to remove the pollen out of Danziger’s lungs with a mini vacuum cleaner, and there was no rhyme or reason behind Bess telling Morgan to trust her, as this essentially created inconsistencies of whether or not Bess was being controlled or manipulated by the organism, or actually journeyed North all on her own, knowing that the final result will net a positive for the settlers and everyone else on this planet. But one could think that, with the “nervous system” of the planet being connected with the Terrians, they would have found a way to automate the process. Then again, if they had, this episode would not exist.
