Unearthed

Earth Final Conflict Episode Review

In which we meet Atavus and things blow up.

What Other Shows Would Do

Rip off Aliens.

Renee (the Ripley) goes looking for Liam (the Newt) and leads an expedition full of fairly expendable flunkies to a dark, dangerous place. Scary monsters show up and start taking out the flunkies, one by one. Flunkie A (the Hudson) freaks and falls apart. Flunkie B (the Hicks) keeps his cool and is rewarded with a kiss from Renee. They plot to blow up the dark, dangerous place and make it out just before the explosion.

What Earth Final Conflict Did

Rip off Aliens.

Renee and Street (the Hudson) take a submarine down to the Taelon Regeneration Chamber, hoping to find out what happened to Liam and the Taelons. Unfortunately, what they find is a new alien species, the Atavus, who feed on the life force of humans and proceed to slaughter all of her new friends. The sub goes "Boom," but not before Sandoval uses the power of the Taelon Mothership to pluck the Regeneration Chamber from the ocean and save the Atavus.

Nice set, suitably claustrophobic. The supporting cast is pretty undistinguished, apart from the leader (the Hicks), but they fulfill their main function of dying horribly. The back-story that they once worked for Sandoval red-herringed me into wondering if they weren't going to turn on her, but apparently the concept of a multi-layered plot didn't occur to anyone.

What Did I Think?

They sliced a fairly large cast down to Renee, Sandoval and Street. It's too bad they felt the need to sort of "start over" in such a drastic fashion, but they did it well. Introducing too many new characters at this point in the series (with, reportedly, only a season left to go) would be something of a waste of time. With a small cast, hopefully the writers can be more focused and not lose track of things so often.