Old Friend

$2.199

This weekend, I saw in the Best Buy sale ad an advert for a TV series being released on DVD. Anymore, that’s not news — it happens every week, and I ignore the vast majority of ’em. I mean, who needs the whole series of Dukes of Hazard? 🙂

This time though, it was Earth 2.

Don’t remember it? Well, I don’t think many folks do. Earth 2 was on NBC around 1994, and was an Amblin Productions joint. To me, it was the best of what TV science fiction could be, and really outshone most anything that’s come along since (although some of the Sci-Fi Channel original stuff lately has been awfully good). Nice effects, but not so effects-centric. Where it shone for me was the writing.

The series surrounded an ill-fated colony that crash lands on a world 22 LY distant. This world is inhabited with a peculiar range of indiginous species, as well as some prisoners from Earth. Of course, no one in the colony knows any of this.

Tonight, I watched the two hour premiere episode, and remembered far more of it than I would’ve believed. I did say I liked it, didn’t I? Seeing this again is like seeing a long-lost friend from long ago. It’s familiar, it’s comfortable, and it makes me ache for space travel for our species. That’s one of the constant aches I’ve had since childhood, and I’ve written about it here before.

Anyway, nice to see it available, all 21 episodes. I’m sure I’ll be having some fun over the next couple of weeks revisiting this favorite of mine.