Earth 2

- space stations orbit Earth

This week's DVD rental was the 1984/5 science fiction tv series, Earth 2. The series didn't last long - just one season - and the only mention I'd ever heard of it was on The X-Files, when the Lone Gunmen asked Mulder to join them for an evening of picking apart the series' scientific inconsistencies :) Still, I wanted to check it out, and though it was not as edgy as something like Battlestar Galactica, I liked it.

The story takes place in a future where Earth is so contaminated that most people live in orbiting space stations and children are beginning to die of a mysterious disease caused by the sterility of the stations' environment. When her son contracts the disease, Devon Adair (Debrah Farentino) decides to fund an expedition to an uninhabited Earth-like planet twenty-two light years distant. The government opposes the expedition and infiltrates it with a secret agent. After twenty-two years in stasis, both passengers and crew end up crashing on the planet due to sabotage and must trek about 3000 miles overland to the site they'd meant to found as New Pacifica, on the way encountering both indigenous aliens and human felons.

There are some nice special effects, the aliens are interesting, and I especially liked the relationships between the characters. The theme of the connection between human and environmental flourishing is also pretty timely. Here are some pics .....


- a member of one of the alien species on G889


- Yale (Sullivan Walker), the cyborg tutor to Devon's son


- Morgan (John Gegenhuber) uses his virtual reality gear to escape into fantasy


- Danzinger (Clancy Brown - he played the Kurgan in Highlander :) and his daughter, True


- Alonzo (Antonio Sabàto, Jr.), the ship's pilot, communicates with the aliens through dreams


- Tim Curry plays a felon sent to the planet in a Botany Bay scenario


- on the road to New Pacifica