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Fri Nov 11 20:37:50 PST 1994
Source unknown"Earth 2": A planet of one's own
New sci-fi series is lost in space but found on the ground
By Joyce Millman
Of the Free Press staff
SAN FRANCISCO -- NBC's new sci-fi adventure series, "Earth 2" (7 p.m. Sunday, Ch. 4), was created by Carol Flint, who wrote and produced "China Beach," the drama series about Vietnam through the eyes of the women who served in the war. And like "China Beach," "Earth 2" is an often downright poetic show about a tough, tender, complicated woman who finds herself a stranger in a strange land.
"Earth 2" is a co-production of Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, but Spielberg has had no active participation in the creation of the show. Which is good news, judging from the ludicrous fantasy-kitsch of Spielberg's other NBC Sunday sci-fi series, "SeaQuest DSV."
The premise of "Earth 2" is intriguing. It's 200 years in the future and humans are living on giant space stations orbiting the depleted, dying Earth. Architect Devon Adair (Debrah Farentino, last seen as Robin on "NYPD Blue"), a third generation space station inhabitant, has devoted her life to finding a planet similar to Earth and suitable for colonization. She thinks she's got one in the unexplored G889, 22 light years away.
Adair's motive is far from purely scientific. She's the single mother of an 8-year-old son, Ulysses (Joey Zimmerman), who suffers from a disease that, as Adair explained in the opening narration of last Sunday's pilot, "our medical community hesitates to recognize." Ulysses and hundreds of other children are wasting away because they can't tolerate the sterile environment of the space stations. Encased in body braces and breathing apparatus and confined to a wheelchair, Ulysses suffers not from the presence of a virus but rather "an absence -- an absence of what nature can provide."
In last Sunday's two-hour opener, Adair and her hand- picked crew outwitted a government conspiracy to sabotage their mission and launched into orbit. But their craft malfunctioned when it entered the atmosphere of G889 and all aboard had to bail out in lifepods, which crash- landed in widely scattered areas of the Earth-like planet.
Trying to regroup after the loss of much of their high-tech gear, Adair and her fellow pioneers step out into fresh air for the first time in their lives -- and encounter adorable little Yoda-like creatures who shoot lethal poison from their claws and subterranean-dwelling skeletal warriors who communicate with the Earthlings through dreams. Ulysses was kidnapped by these "Terreans," but after Adair secured his release, he appeared to be cured.
The pilot was uneven, but there's no denying the series' potential. The scenery is gorgeous (it was filmed near Santa Fe, New Mexico), the writing is often evocative and Farentino, who has one of the loveliest speaking voices around, gives a beautifully detailed performance as the stubborn, intelligent heroine.
On the other hand, there's an awful lot of sci-fi stuff recycled from the "Alien" saga, "E.T.," "Star Wars" and "Dune," and there's even a chatty robot and a weaselly bad guy straight out of "Lost in Space."
Tightened to an hour, though, "Earth 2" just might work. The show has a pungent mix of characters: the maternal, authoritative, patrician Adair; the mechanic and single father John Danziger (Clancy Brown), who isn't afraid to stand up to Adair; the young intern Julia Heller (Jessica Steen), who has to prove herself up to the task of being the only medical professional on the mission; the wise Cyborg tutor Yale (Sullivan Walker), who's a rewired former violent criminal.
The weak links here are daytime soap stud Antonio Sabato Jr., who acts with his eyebrows and chin as cocky pilot Alonzo Solace, and John Gegenhuber, who does a shameless imitation of Paul Reiser in the "Alien" series as the conniving, cowardly government liaison Morgan Martin.
The special effects on display in last week's pilot were pretty decent (love those eyepiece telephones) and the action sequences were entertaining. But what stuck with you were the more intimate moments -- the look of overpowering love on Adair's face as she tucked her son in for his 22- light-year sleep, the wonderment of Danziger's little daughter True (J. Madison Wright) as she touches her first handful of dirt and, most of all, the pioneers' first step outside their lifepods into their new Eden.
The pilot of "Earth 2" wasn't preachy about environmental doom. Instead, Flint and her co-writers did such a good job of creating a hermetically-sealed environment in the first half of the show that it rendered Adair's first, wide-eyed walk under the sunny skies of G889 even more breathtakingly moving. It made you want to kiss the ground.