Earth: Final Conflict

Year 1: near genius, entertaining, thought provoking.

Years 2-4: Mediocre, some nice short skirts from time-to-time but that's about all.

Year 5: Deus Ex Machina, and not in a good way. This season was a form of insanity. Watching the principles struggle through this silliness was very painful.

There are so many good TV shows today there's no point in watching this.

For older TV that blows away most of today's TV and movies check out:

The Prisoner (1967) The Singing Detective (1986) I, Claudius (1976)

There is no doubt Gene Roddenberry is a genius. Earth Final Conflict deserves to be measured in the same greatness as Star Trek. Equally superb vision and equally enjoyable.

What set EFC apart was it's amazing realism. The producers went to great lengths to fuse Taelon technology into earth's daily lives. The atmosphere alone is awesome. The characters are very human, even the Taelons. Despite their tranquil and sedated movements, they have their good and evil sides just like the rest of us. It is amazing how Gene Roddenberry was able to conceive that in a believable alien context. In the show, the Resistance is fighting as much against the Taelons as against humans. Every episode was filled with suspense. EFC is the prove that good story can win without huge SFX budgets. Mr. Roddenberry, YOU'RE THE BEST!

The consistent cast changes did hurt the show. But every thing was still in order: the Taelons with their hidden agendas, the humans still mixed with conflicting thoughts about their alien visitors. It's sad to see characters come and go, but the spirits were not lost. It is a little sad to see such a good show on a slow downward spiral. The realism is slowly taken over with special effects. Open land is replaced with Taelon-styled interiors, our heros' pistols are replaced with energy weapons, etc. But all were still in order......until the Atavus arrived.

That spelt the end of EFC (much like the marriage killed the Lois & Clark show). It took away a large part of what made the show interesting. The Taelons are gone, the humans no longer seem human, and the plot gets slower and slower by the episode. All the original characters are gone except Palmer. And the intelligence that was seen in earlier seasons are gone. I'm not going to get into details of why people didn't like season 5. It held together only long enough to give EFC a decent ending. I guess Mr. Roddenberry's notes were all used up by season 4. I bet this show would have excelled if he himself were here to steer it as it goes.

Despite its evident failure in season 5, EFC remained one of my favourites. It's a look into humans, and what we would have done if aliens do come. ("aliens" here refering to higher intelligence, not every other race of destructive monsters seen in other shows and movies)

The pilot episode written by Gene Roddenberry is excellent, but the show goes nowhere, all hugger mugger and no real story. Roddenberry's basic idea, that contact between humans and superior aliens will not be all black and white but will be filled with ambiguities, is a good one. Later writers, however, think in terms of good aliens and bad aliens. The use of female actors to play androgynous aliens was a good idea, but in later seasons everybody except Da'an overdoes it. In the third season, there are a number of scripts by Howard Cheykin, who is an excellent writer, and who wrote some memorable episodes of The Flash TV series, as well as some great graphic novels. However, he is unable to do anything here, because he is locked in to what is really not a workable story line. I have not watched the fifth season, but I have read that it throws out most of what was established in the first four. For scifi completists only.

EFC started out interesting, and I found myself anticipating it as a must-see. Then, characters left or got killed off, and others not so good (and mostly one-dimensional) appeared. Generally, the whole show started a very depressing slide to the point where I would avoid watching it, because it had turned from thought-provoking to downright hokey crap. No wonder that nearly none of the characters in the cast actually stayed for the entire series (just Sandoval, who wasn't a shining example of humanity, although capably rendered by Von Flores). For some reason, the creators kept getting rid of the good guys, making them mutate, or die, or whatever. Vacuous non-ending to something that started out with so much hope.

Well, WHAT have they done to my favorite show?? Earth: Final Conflict used to be a wonderful series. In the first season, it was about a contact with a truly _different_ alien race, called the Taelons. Outwardly peaceful and benevolent, secretly altering the future of humanity. They weren't evil, just desperate (although we didn't know it). They weren't good, because they did bad things to us. Then came the second season. Lots of action. Little thought. Liam. Liam is a hybrid. Half Kimeran (another alien race), half human. He quickly became Mr. Superman-like-character. This was _BAD_ TV. Now we are presented with season 3. Pretty good, although Liam is as stiff as ever, Renee is his sidekick (both characters are so flat they could practically interchange lines at any point). Perhaps season 4 will be better. I doubt it though. There is something wrong with the writers on this show. Unless you are looking for disappointment when s4 gets here, don't get too involved.