Shark Bytes

I enjoyed seasons 1-4, but several season transitions brought the show closer to oblivion. Boone's death was a huge blow, and it earned my vote for the jump-the-shark moment. Liam was cool in season 2, but they neutered him in season 3. The regeneration chamber at the end of season 4 killed the show's whole premise. Season 5 was simply a waste of film.

Lamest aliens ever. That is all.

Another potential lost, thanks to dumbass production companies who think people want "dumbed-down" rather than depth and meaning.

I was a really big fan of season 1. Why, because we were presented with a storyline where the protagonist begins his journey with a "black and white" premise and discovers, much like real life, things are more "shades of gray" when it comes to the companions.

Just watch an episode like Sandoval's Run, where the character who was presented as a human jack booted authoritarian thug for the companions who when his CVI fails, becomes a more sympathetic and tragic figure.

On the topic of tragic, yes, I was one of those who felt like a dagger was plunged into my heart as I watched how all season one was flush down the toilet. I was on the Usenet boards for the show at that time and there was an active disdain for where they took the show in season 2.What was interesting was a show representative came on the boards and told us the show was never meant to have an over arching storyline. That such things were too complicated for new viewers so this format was just more "viewer friendly" aka "dumbed down"

I went back each season to see what they did to the show after season 1. It was nothing but schlocky syndicated sci-fi with shallow characters and your usual "good/evil" one dimensional archetypes.

I would die to get season 1 dvd set, but here is an interesting story, seems a different company has the rights to season 1. Hmm, makes one wonder what really happened between seasons 1 and 2.

Yes I agree with the majority of you. I to was hooked on Season 1 of Earth Final Conflict, I loved the characters and the way the brought meaning to the show, I enjoyed the way "Lili Marquette"
and "AUGUR" flirted back and forth and the way "William Boone" presented himself as a "Liberation Fighter" and a "Companion Representitive" but like with all great things there is script writers and they ruin it for the rest of us, I love Sci Fi shows, I have watched almost all they have put out, and I tell you sometimes I would like to roll the script up and smack them upside the head. Like frig do these people not have any imagination, I know myself I can think of thousands of show ideas and I know as a long time viewer what I love in a show. but I hope that they can read these and bring us another series that was as enjoyable as Earth Final Conflict but with this one give it a great story line.

[quote]I found efc halfway through the first season and could not >believe how badly they ruined the show in the second season. > It was a thoughtful intelligent and emotional show, but no more! I >stopped watching halfway through the second season. >as far as I'm concerned the series ended at Boones funeral. > I'm very surprised to see on other sites how many people >love the new garbage and are glad to see the old characters >gone. For me it will always be the series that could have been. Does anyone >else feel this way ?[/quote]


Yes, Me!!!

Well, I started watching the show at season 2, and i was only 7 or something like that. I loved it! Then I stopped watching it when they got rid of Liam and the Taelons and introduced that other species...that was just stupid.

Season... five? There wasn't a season "five", was there...?

The death of Boone was the first dive, then as the series dragged on and on occasion took a semblance of interest, Liam disappeared and all of a sudden you look around and no one is left from the beginning except Sandoval i think, but he wasn't really Sandoval anymore

Earth: The Final Conflict wasted more potential than any sci-fi show in recent memory. But the reaction I most closely associate with watching it is, "What the ..?" That's the sound that constantly escaped my lips practically every time I watched the show, at least after the first season. I remember missing the first part of the "meet Liam" episode, staring at the new hero on the screen and saying, "What the ...?" Of course, the same remark applied practically anytime they introduced some sort of ridiculously complex technology, including even the CVI (Cyber-Viral Implant). Viral Implant??? Sounds more like a disease ... or something that would make your computer flip its screen and display the words, "You are a dork" as it starts whistling Dixie repeatedly. (That particular device was interesting, however; it just needed a new name.) But the biggest flaw in "Final Conflict" was the use of the self-contained episode, in which (as another writer has already noted) Sandoval could travel into an alien dimension because of his obsession for some chick who looks exactly like a chick he knows on earth, but isn't really, but never mind, he's not going back and we're never going to hear of her again, so you can forget all about her, and the alien dimension, next week. ("What the ...?") The same concept also spawned an endless array of interesting characters who, predictably, get killed off before the final credits roll. There was also the episode in which Sandoval splits from the Taelons and goes on the run, to be naively aided by the Resistance (who reveal their loyalties to him), yet, for whatever reason, he eventually rejoins the Companions and seemingly has no memory of the Resistance. ("What the ...?") Frankly, I never bought into the whole good-guy notion of the Resistance anyway -- I mean, let's see, you've got highly advanced aliens terrorizing your people, and you can't even bring yourself to target that sycophant Sandoval and banish him to the land of wind and ghosts? Sheesh, General Patton would have ordered one of his best snipers to pick off that little weasel so fast, they'd have both had time to finish their morning coffee. By the end of this series' run, we'd seen such "classics" as (1) some kind of monitoring device implanted in Liam's vision (so why didn't he just hold a notepad behind his back and write it all down?); (2) main cast members dropping out faster than the contestants on "Survivor" ("Wait ... what happened to the chick with the dark hair ... where's that hip bald dude with the subterranean hideaway ... I thought the hero's name was Boone .. wait, he was a redhead ... what the ...?"); and (3) we were eventually treated to a retro race of villains who were as one-dimensional as Jimmy "Dyn-O-Mite" Walker. I particularly loved the brilliance of naming one of the Atavus "Howlyn" -- awoooooooo! -- and (as has already been noted) Street falling for one of these handsome vampire wanna-be's, which got several people killed before Street wised up and Miss Palmer dismissed it as an "oopsy." And of course, instead of wiping the Atavus off the face of the universe at the end of the series, the politically correct Earthlings wind up regarding all life forms as interconnected. Ah yes, all that was missing were the strains of "We Are the World" in the background. For this I wasted five years of my television life? Gene Roddenberry must have been spinning like a lathe.

The "story arc" that Gene set up in season one gradually degraded over time, but I think this was as much a result of trying to change a single long story into 100+ episodes as any other factor. The show jumped the shark in the middle of the season 4 finale. The suspense was building very well...Ma'el's riddle solved, a global race to fix the problem. Taelons are trying to save themselves at any cost, the Zo'or Da'an relationship is finally revealed (and is one of the few times something like that has made complete sense-even if La Salva overplayed the rebellious teen)...and then they start actually get to the chamber Ma'el created. You don't realize it at this point, because you are caught up in the suspense...but the way the Taelons will be saved will create the single biggest flop I know to exist in TV: the atavus. Renee has no meaning without Liam, Zo'or has no meaning without Da'an. Da'an's gone, Liam is gone. Show=suck. It had its bad moments (especially following Boone's death, and the increasingly strange storylines) but there were some good episodes among those as well (Dark Matter, the Kimmerah storyline). Season 5 was the trebuchet for this show.

Ok the obvious choice here for those who were still reeling from the "death" of Boone back in 1998 was that it jumped after season 1. But I really didn't think that Seasons 2-4 were really that bad. Ok, there were some plot lines that were trashed and forgotten but for the most part it kept me interested. People keep insisting that Roddenberry would never write about Godlike beings like the Kimera or have an Alien Lead character. I don't buy that. Roddenberry was a humanist and as such he believed that humans are destined to be higher beings in the future. I mean GR himself wrote the first few Q episodes of ST:TNG. In one of them Picard reads that line from Shakespeare "....how like a god" and says that one day we will be gods. ST:TMP had Decker evolve into a new all knowing god like being after merging with Vger. This is not new to GR's work. Ok mabye they took it a bit further with Liam being a Kimera. I look at him as being an alien who is forced to find his own Humanity. Not unlike Spock or Data or whoever. Get this, Data was based on an Android from the Questor Tapes (70s Gr pilot) and I believe he was the lead character in that. So who knows what GR would have done. We don't know becuase he didn't do it. This was Tribune's show. I liked alot of what they did. They tried alot of things. New and Different things. Not all of them worked as well as they should have but it was interesting enough for me up to Season 4. For me the show really jumped after season 4. Practically all the cast is gone and the show changes in tone and feel drastically. The overall message of the show stays more or less the same but the quality is so much worse. Mainly due to the lack of a budget and the parent company giving up on the show completely. They just forced a season 5 to fullfill a deal with Sci Fi channel. So as such the last season is half-azzed and it shows. They ripped the most interesting parts of the show out (Taelons) and all the interesting characters are either gone or shadows of their former selves. Boones return is empty and unsatisfying. The Atavus concept changed drastically from the previous seasons. Nothing like the Atavus in "The Summit" or "Atavus" episodes. Again, probably because of the lack of a budget. There were a couple of notable episodes but it wasn't enough to bring the final season up to par with the rest of the show. The Final Conflict, while having a meaningful message was just poorly executed and was utterly disappointing. Too Bad.

When Boone was written out of the show, the show fell apart, introducing a bunch of horrible actors and scriptwriters.

One can only wonder what GR had in mind for this (I believe he had only written 3 scripts). To go from the end to the beginning....Season 5 is a total joke. Cheap sets, bad acting, Boone returning & being killed again offscreen? Who cared about the Atavus? This was the "final conflict" the title refers to? Lame. Season 4-I like how after so much build up, the end comes when the mere 8 or 9 Taelons & Jaridians merge (did the rest die off? don't they have homeworlds full of their kind? or is it just that they can't afford more than 15 people on the set?). The Jaridian attack on earth from earlier in the season was something we'd been anticipating for a long time, totally anti-climatic. Season 3-Rene is put in for her looks, Lili is a much better character. Her being kidnapped & "marrying" a Jaridian is the height of soapy pulp (I noticed they tried to sex up Lili in season 2 but apparently this wasn't good enough). Auger is made a nice guy and then replaced by cyber chick. The plots drag out endlessly with Liam & company never getting caught but also never getting the edge on the Taelons either. How can the leader of the resistance also be an undercover agent at the same time? How does he account for his time away from his Taelon duties? Season 2-Liam is created & takes over a few hours after his birth. Silly. S2 used some old Trek ideas-time travel portal/parallel universe-all to no avail with the main point. You'd think showing the public all the bad Taelon tech & experiments would be enough to turn the tide. Season 1-Boone's death seems to be the JTS moment. Boone was a much better character than Liam, Lili was cool in S1 as well as Augie. S1 episodes had intrigue. Boone was supposed to be stuck in the middle, are the Taelons good or is the resistance? Can anyone tell me what the Taelons master plan was? Made no sense. Da'an was great at being mysterious. Zo'or kind of ruins it because he's obviously evil. Anyone meeting Zo'or should be able to say to themselves "this guy wants to do us in". So how far back is the JTS moment? Episode 2 (forgot the name) when Boone discovers Sandoval killed his wife & does nothing about it in order to maintain his cover. Huh? He could nail Sandoval anyway, the guy killed his wife. His revenge wouldn't expose the resistance. And more importantly, wouldn't telling everyone that the Taelon implants caused Sandoval to do something like that be proof enough that the Taelons can't be trusted? The poor writing in episode 2 already put me on edge that things weren't right here. Season 1 is the only good season overall. I wish they could have explored Boone's implant more & what it can do. I wish the Taelons agenda wasn't a good or evil thing. But in the end EFC is good for one episode, the very first-based on GR's script. From that pilot, a great show could have emerged. Oh well.

This show peaked with the season 1 show called Sandoval's Run. Up to that point the show had an engaging plot line with enough character to give actors something to work with. After that show, season 1 became a rather formulaic bunch of disjointed episodes, where a guy and a girl go, explore, fix whatever, happy end, all in 60 minutes or less. By the end of season one I was hoping the writers would use the summer to write a bunch of material with more continuity but instead they tore plotline altogether. So my vote: the show jumped the shark right after the Sandoval's Run episode.