It’s Uly’s ninth birthday! It’s also sixteen years in the future! It’s Earth 2’s first time travel episode!
Because the planet G889 has the strange metaphysical connections to dreams that it does, Devon is able to receive dream messages from her son in the future. The future version of Ulysses needs her to send little Uly on a mission, alone, to hide some of his DNA in some Terrian tunnels. Devon has to grapple with sending her little boy on a dangerous mission, but she does and Uly does fine.
We spend a lot of time in the future in this one. They give the standard line about how it is a “possible future” but nothing in this episode does anything to convince me that this isn’t the actual timeline the show is building toward (and since the show was cancelled after this season, I doubt they ever do anything to say otherwise). In the future, Uly is indeed leading a faction of Terrian rebels who are fighting against oppression by the humans. It turns out that the colonization of New Pacifica worked and the planet is now home to humans who are expanding into Terrian territory. For some reason (racism?) a lot of the parents of sick kids, who came to this planet to be healed, refused the help of the Terrians and are living with synthetic treatments. The humans are trying to “civilize” the Terrians and Future Uly and his Terrians (and Future True is with them!) are working against the humans. But then Ulysses is captured and, though Future Devon (a politician who hasn’t spoken to her son in too long) is there to rescue him, the baddies successfully take away Uly’s Terrian abilities, but luckily, because he dreamed into the past and got little Uly to stash his DNA in a safe place, he is able to get the powers back.
Other stuff: 1) There’s a subplot about True finding a Koba (again) and enlisting Yale’s aid in caring for it. It doesn’t really contribute much to the episode, but it’s nice to know that True respects Yale much more than she did back when she hated him for trying to make her learn. 2) It’s established that Terrians won’t hurt Uly because he has Terrian DNA. This checks out, given that they wouldn’t hurt Gaal because he wore a necklace of Terrian bones and Uly’s DNA was caused by the Terrians. It does interest me that this tribe of Terrians actively (at first) dislikes that Uly is a connection between their kind and humanity. I like seeing that the different tribes of Terrians can have different opinions. It adds complexity to them, as a species. 3) It is also suggested that Ulysses can do the time-travelling dream because of the emotional connection between him and his mother, and Terrians don’t have such emotional connections, so they can’t do it. 4) In this episode Devon sneaks around and doesn’t tell anyone about her dream from the future or the mission she is sending Uly on. I don’t know why. Embarrassment? Probably would have been helpful to consult Yale or Alonso in situations like this.