Another week, another televisual corpse to dissect. This time, I’ll stick the scalpel in the fascinating, frustrating world of Earth2, a show that—with a little more luck and a few different choices—could have been big time. I mean that sincerely. Earth2 had a whole lot going for it—cool concepts, writing, good budget. It’s one of science fiction TV’s more unfortunate casualties. It lasted a single season, fall of 1994.
As the rewatch-in-one series continues, I find that in almost every show I review I think of Battlestar Galactica and Lost, two recent shows that got things epically right and epically wrong. Earth2 has more than a little in common with both. As with those shows, there’s a large central cast in a hostile environment, survival hangs in the balance, and there’s a mix of sci-fi and mystical fantasy woven into the plot. In fact it becomes less science and more fantasy as the show goes on. Earth2 even has a few future Losties are in the cast.
