Personally, I would have thought it was too early to introduce more humans on the Earth 2 planet, but the very second episode brings us none other than Tim Curry! And he’s Tim Currying it up! I had no memory of this character from youth, so I genuinely didn’t know what was going on with him. Curry plays Gaal, who poses as an astronaut who had crashed on the planet 15 years ago and has been stranded awaiting rescue ever since.
When I rattled off the characters last time, I left out one Commander Broderick, because had been killed off in the pilot and I assumed he wouldn’t matter anymore. Not so! It turns out that the creature that seemingly killed him is actually only capable of putting humans into a deathlike coma for a couple days. Gaal makes rest of the humans think the Commander was dug up by aliens and captured, then Gaal arranges a deal with the aliens to get the Commander back. This proves how valuable Gaal’s knowledge of the world is and he positions himself as guide to the group, and when the Commander grows suspicious and goes to attack the aliens, Gaal arranges that he be killed off again, this time for real. And this time the aliens are to blame and everyone loves Gaal. Gaal, it turns out, was not an astronaut, but a prisoner sent to the planet by Earth government who were using the world as a penal colony. I suppose this is what the Terrians were talking about when they said humans had been there before. Gaal is the only survivor of the penal colony (or so he says anyway) and he killed a lot of his fellows to get that distinction.
The aliens that Gaal deals with are, by the way, not the Terrians and they’re not the little puppet guys from the first episode either. They are another species, seemingly intelligent and capable of language, and they’re pretty impressive for this kind of show. These are the Grendlers. They’re still basically humanoid, but big and more Star Wars quality than Star Trek. I don’t know that we’re going to be shown an interesting Grendler culture, but I like them nonetheless.
Anyway, perhaps it strains credibility that Gaal would just happen to be within walking distance of where our main characters come down on the planet, but whatever. It’s fine.
What else? It’s been clarified to me that Yale is a cyborg whose original memory has been overwritten by the Yale personality. I’d guess this was also something done with prisoners. The Yale series was known for the original, presumably criminal, personality to come back.
Clancy Brown’s character is named Danziger and his daughter is named True. True has screamed four times so far, so I guess I’m gonna need to keep track of that.
I don’t think I got into the mystical healing nature of the planet. Devon’s son Uly was sick, but has been healing because of the Terrians. In this episode she has to learn to stop worrying that he’ll be sick and let him live like a child. Uly, meanwhile, had a moment I thought was cute where he imagined a whole scenario where maybe he is the prince of the Terrians and they would obey him. It seems like something a child would imagine. How true it turns out to be on the show, I don’t know.
Morgan (the jerk character) gets paralyzed in the same way the Commander did and spends a couple days “dead”. He has a bit of afterlife anxiety from his near-death experience and he’s pretty sure he went to Hell. I know the show does grow an even more mystical sort of storyline as it goes, but I don’t remember if it ends up actually having literal spiritual stuff. I wonder if Morgan will be less of the jerk after this point.
That’s the important stuff from this one, I think. I’m still on board. I don’t think I mentioned it last time, but the ongoing plot (at this point anyway) is that the group needs to make it to a specific spot on the planet where their colony is intended to be started. It’s a kind of wagon train setup. I’ll be interested if that’s the case the whole time or if they actually make it to the spot and begin setting up. Time shall tell.
