Date of airing: April 23, 1995 (NBC)
Nielsen ratings information: 7.9 million viewers, 5.2/9 in Households
written and directed by: John Harrison
Well, it was both an annoying and an excellent episode. It was annoying because the framing device seemed unnecessary and it even brought some confusion during the opening minutes, as I could not tell if the chopped-up, in media res opening was intended or not. And it was excellent because I liked the emotional level of the last act when Danziger was facing the remorse (or maybe the lust for revenge?) of the Grendler, and the writers established that humans and Grendlers were not so different from each other after all – especially in this episode which essentially told the viewers that Grendlers were emotional beings that cared about their species and the death of their friends. It was also an annoying episode because the characters needed to explain what happened on that fateful day out in the middle of nowhere, when Danziger shot the Grendler, instead of naturally planting that story into the narrative without framing it around the question of why the dead Grendler was put on a public display at Camp Mary’s Garden. It was excellent again because I nearly cried during Danziger’s scene at the end, which I never expected I would do during this series. This may have been the hour of the show with the best performances of the cast?
 |
| Not dead. Just sleeping with her face in the dirt. |
The episode definitely would have looked better if the first half had been about the survival of the expedition group, while the second half had dealt with the aftermath of what happened to them – this way the framing device would have been justified. I felt that the tension of the first act got lost in the episode when Yale and the other guy whose name I do not know found the group, and I figured that the mystery of the dead Grendler at camp, and the sitting and quiet Grendler up the hill, was not needed for the story at all, but was forced to be part of the narrative because that is what 1990s television was all about. A question needed to be asked and an answer needed to be found, and that question came with the Grendler display at camp. But this episode was not at all about the mystery of the dead Grendler and what the other Grendler wanted, because it seemed quite obvious from the beginning what was happening. One Grendler was dead and the other Grendler either wanted justice or revenge. But the characters behaved like the answer to their questions were nowhere to be found throughout the first half of the hour.
I was also unsure whether the humans were purposely written as the violent race on the planet. Danziger, though he was scared and probably a little delirious in addition to hallucinating his daughter, killed a living being on this planet, and one might have thought that the Grendler was about to figure out what kind of alien species it stumbled upon, naming humankind as its enemy. The group back at camp behaved terribly as well, wanting to blast the lone Grendler away, no questions asked, not even thinking about what might happen if the Grendler was not alone and you shoot up one, just to meet its hundreds of friends hiding behind the trees. I would have thought that a couple of generations into the future, humanity would have learned to solve problems without the threat of violence, but I guess that was not in the minds of the characters of the show, as well as TV writers of the late twentieth century. I felt ashamed of my species when they just wanted to blast the Grendler away, not knowing what it wanted, and the Grendler not even doing any harm. Humans... how terrible they are.
Anyway... With the annoying framing device, the first act had a more serious problem. The story jumped from one day to the next, from one quick twist to another quick twist, and before the act was over, it seemed obvious that the episode was not at all about the survival of the expedition group, but just the mystery of what happened to them in the first act. The quick time jumps killed the tension (and story) of the episode, because I was more interested in what happened to the group right after they crashed their vehicle, as well as what happened during the days that Yale needed to get to Danziger and the others (it was said that Yale would need four days to catch up to them). The writers even used a fake-out, when Yale and the other guy found the group, and Julia was resting on the sand, face down – as if she was dead or unconscious. But that was not the case because Julia was just sleeping, though her decision to sleep out in the open, with her face right in the dirt, without any cover on her body or between her and the sand to protect herself from the elements, seemed absurd.
 |
| This is not the beginning of a beautiful friendship between two interplanetary species. |
But then there was the final act that saved the episode a little above average, making it a bit more memorable. Not only was I quite surprised about Clancy Brown’s acting abilities, but I am almost sure he and the studio may have sent this episode in for Emmy consideration, because he was good enough in this hour to showcase that EARTH 2 had talented actors in it, which was kind of needed at this stage of the series, as the writers ran out of science-fiction plots and included survival elements into the narrative. I also liked that True was the mature character in the Danziger family, even if it was easy for her to do, considering the fact that her father was probably still delirious from his adventure out in the desert. I would have loved to see an episode of the show that could have showcased the kids a lot better, making them more important for either the characters or the story. Granted, Uly has always been of importance since he is supposed to be the Terrian king in the future, but True seemed to have had no importance at all to anyone.
