The Voice of Reason

I hope that the reason for this episode is the lack of money for a more serious production, and not someone's idiotic idea to round off the season. The episode consists of a series of flashbacks on almost all of the episodes that precede it, by which a panicked war veteran tries to convince a military committee that the Earth is threatened by an alien invasion, and that the same is already underway. Not badly filmed, but essentially redundant and meaningless. They should have finished the season with the previous episode.

4/10

Yeah it's definitely a lazy episode, but I guess it could have been worse? I mean, at least the episodes they tie together here CAN semi-plausibly be tied together. The 'story' they use to do the tying-together, though? That's weak af, and can't even be saved by the cast - which includes the wonderful Daniel J Travanti, a young Lochlyn Munro, Gordon Clapp AND the immortal Don S. Davis.

The story actually feels like what I imagine the writers' room was like when they conceived of this episode: Writer A: "What if Sandkings survived that episode and started spreading?" Writer B: "Yeah maybe, but I don't buy it fully, what else have you got?" Writer A: "Okay, what if the alien thing from that astronaut episode survived and started taking over people on earth?" Writer B: "Yeah nah, that died. And do NOT 'what if it survived' me because it died. Anything else?" Writer A: "Alright well what if we take the sex alien from this other episode..."

It's lazy. It's probably worth watching, at best, just to see the actors in the overarching story, but you're not missing anything if you skip it.

This is certainly pathetic. When I saw this for the first time back in 1995, I thought that this would be the death knell of the series. They had run out of money and interest. I was saddened because some of the episodes in the first year showed promise. As it turns out, the series went on for seven years and there were some pretty impressive shows included. This particular one is a shameless effort to draw a few scenes from the first season and turn it into a convoluted plot. A nervous man meets before a subcommittee with a wild story of alien invasion. The head of the committee played by Daniel J. Travanti, formerly of "Hill Street Blues," tries to head him off at every pass. Following is a series of film clips from totally unrelated episodes. They did ignore the second one, "Valerie 13," and the later "I, Robot" because I guess they couldn't work robots or androids into the plot. The rest is so poorly orchestrated that it sadly falls on its face. I suppose they were counting on us fans hanging in there until they could get Season 2 off the ground. I could go into each of the offerings that were invaded for their life blood, but suffice it to say that it never works because no connection can be made that would make rational sense.

What a horrible episode ... We are shown clips from many episodes of the first season, combined with a hearing of a committee. That is very poor episode recycling (just one set, no special effects, very cheap to produce). The only question I have is if they ran out of ideas or money to do this. In total season one had a lot of very good episodes, so it's a pity in my opinion that they ended with this weak episode. In addition to that, the behavior of the scientist is very much exaggerated. If he really wanted to convince the committee, he should have realized that being cooler would be quite more convincing than giving the paranoid mad man. I think any real committee would have ended that hearing quite earlier.