Failed Sci-Fi Dramas?: Earth 2

We’re officially knee deep into a brand new year, and being as the new year season is a time to resolve to better ourselves in various ways, I thought I’d lend you guys a hand by revisiting a format that I did a few months ago. My previous “Failed Sci-Fi Dramas?” piece was about Babylon 5. I thoroughly enjoyed preparing for that one, even if I did end up jumping the gun a little bit. *Note to readers: If you’re going to review things, finish the thing before you review it. That’s not to say that I don’t still stand by what I wrote, but it’s amazing how a handful of episodes can completely change your opinion of a show.

Anyway, I was just way off topic. Today, we’re going to look at another show that I think really went before its time, and that’s Earth 2. If you’re not familiar, the basic premise of the show is that pollution and over-crowding have pushed a sizeable portion of humanity off of Earth and into space stations. This setup works, but not well. Because of things like artificial gravity, and sterilized, recirculated air a number of people are either born with, or develop health problems that ultimately result in early death, creatively named “the Syndrome”. Our main protagonist, Devon Adair, is a billionaire whose son, Ulysses, is one of those unfortunate people that has developed health problems. She has made it her business previous to the first episode to find a planet that would be suitable for human colonization with the hope that taking her son there will help him rid himself of his health issues.

This show really doesn’t waste any time jumping into its story. We open as the colony ship that Devon has personally financed is making final preparations for departure. We’re quickly introduced to most of our main characters, and then we’re given the political lay of the land, and all in about the first 20 minutes of the pilot episode. Speaking of those politics, the jist is that Devon’s insistence on colonizing a world 22 light years away is terribly unpopular with the government of Earth. Obviously, this is because the more spread out things become, the harder it is for politicians to keep control of all the machinations. At any rate, somehow a member of the ship’s crew finds a pre-release newscast about the destruction of the ship, an event that’s supposed to happen eight hours into the future. As a result of this information, the ship is thoroughly searched and the peeps all leave eight hours early, against the orders of the man.

This part of the episode is actually pretty intense, and we get to see that the special effects are really good. Also, I was a little put off by the fact that the score was done with synthesizers, but we’re actually going to talk about that later. This show actually thrives on intrigue, and I like that because it left more going on than just a wild frontier, colonization show. Sure, the trials of colonizing an alien world can be exciting and interesting, but that would get pretty old pretty quickly so the fact that the developers of the show tried to layer different aspects of the metaplot is good. Speaking of, I’m not too certain as to the why, although sabotage is a pretty good bet, but the ship with all the people and supplies and stuff crashes on the new planet. It’s a pretty obvious plot device, but being on an alien world without all your stuff does up the tension quite a bit. Anyway, the first episode of the show is a lot like a trip to the grocery store. Once all the people have landed on the surface, they spend their time foraging for supplies that survived, and looking for other people who survived.

Moving into broad strokes, what can be said about Earth 2? As I said earlier, there was a lot of intrigue going on. Over the short course of the show, we find out that one of the main reasons that the government didn’t want anyone settling that particular planet is because they had been using it as a penal colony, of sorts. They’d just send the worst criminals there and forget about them. It’s really fun trying to figure out who’s playing what angle too. The doctor, in a move that surprised no one, was working with a super secret government organization. To what end, no one knows because the show ended before we could find out, but having groups with mixed motivations is always fun. The characters all seemed a little stereotyped at first. You had the strong leader that commanded both respect and trust. There was the other leader who backed up the main leader most of the time. There was a pencil pushing bureaucrat who was conniving and only had his own interests at heart. But then there was Yale. Yale is a cybernetically enhanced man who used to be a violent criminal, but had had his memories and personality traits suppressed. By the time we catch up to him, he’s working as a personal tutor for Devon’s son. His may have been one of the easier characters to develop well, but it was done well, mark my words. When he’s in conflict with himself, you really feel that conflict.

In Hollywood, in the 1994 when this show came out, everything was filmed in southern California, and this show was no different, but they did do a good job making the vistas feel just a little alien. The planet was not supposed to be radically different from Earth so presenting something that felt familiar, but off was a great approach. This was done by use of makeup, and using it to make monster creatures that were sort of a primitive looking humanoid species, and also through animatronics. The show didn’t make extensive use of it, but it did use some animatronics, and for the most part, those special effects hold up well. The production team put a lot of money and effort into building some of the center piece props like this one:

Holy product placement!

There are actually a great number of vehicle props, as well as other props that you can just tell someone put an inordinate amount of time into building so props to the prop masters! Yeah, okay, I’ll stick to my day job. Joke’s on you though, this is my day job! Anyway, back to the score. So I said that I was bummed at the beginning when the score was synthesizer. I realized that really effective creative choice was made to use synthesizers during space scenes, and organic orchestrations during the planetside scenes. It’s a small touch, but it does add a richness to the experience. Finally, in terms of broad strokes story, I’d say this show did a pretty good job holding things together. There are very few, if any episodes, where I felt like they’d wasted time. Episode stories were really focused, and always contributed to the metaplot, or the setting in some way. I was also impressed with some of the subjects that were explored. They may appear mundane, but metaphorically, they work really well. For instance, a B plot of one episode regards a couple who were married shortly before the trip to the new world. In this show’s setting, marriages only last a handful of years, and then couples either have to renew, or they marry someone else. This is to vary the gene pool. Anyway, these two realize that their marriage has legally been over for some time, and they’re left to figure out where to go from there. It seems like a mundane thing, but in context of their established relationship, and the strengths that they bring to one another, that notion of the way things are suddenly changing carries a lot of weight.

In all, I would say that this was a pretty solid show. There weren’t really any aspects of it that I didn’t enjoy. It just suffered from being kind of cerebral, and really expensive to produce. Kudos to NBC for giving it a go though. I would say that it’s the kind of show that would probably thrive in today’s Sci-Fi market. I see shades of Earth 2 in shows like The Expanse, The 100, and a couple of others. I certainly wouldn’t complain if Netflix ever decided that they wanted to do a reboot! It’s only 21 episodes long, and I think it actually is on Netflix so give it a try! I guarantee that you won’t be disappointed! Stick around for next week as we pick apart another media morsel!