Sheena Easton is a once popular singer who has experienced a major decline in her career.  Ditto for her character in this episode.

After playing to an appreciative crowd in a small club, she refuses to come back for an encore.  In her dressing room, she dumps a pile of pills in her hand.  Before she can gulp them down, a strange blob charges through the wall and convulses her.

After she wakes up, she sees someone else in the mirror.  It only lasts a second, though. She is inspired to start writing some new songs, but is brought down again when she sees her manager / husband banging a roadie.  She breaks a glass and is thinking about slashing her wrists when the other person appears in the mirror again.

This is Rachel, from the future.  She claims that in her timeline Sheena had died from an overdose that night at the small club.  Rachel’s appearance has prevented that from happening again.

Her husband is once again banging the roadie when two blobs from the future possess their bodies.  The one possessing the girl is understandably intrigued, feeling himself up.  The one possessing the man is bafflingly uninterested in the hot naked blonde. Yeah, it’s a dude on the inside, but that candy coating is pretty sweet.

They go to see Sheena and tell her they are from the same future as Rachel.  They plan to kill Sheena to restore the timeline.  Inexplicably, they don’t just kill her then.

They go back to the room where the husband was banging the roadie and get back in the same exact position so the couple won’t notice that their bodies had been possessed.  This is should be kinda awkward since the time travelers were both men.  Fortunately, this was not shown — kind of like how in Ghost, when Patrick Swayze was kissing Dinty Moore, they wisely did not show her actually swapping spit with the psychic Whoopi Goldberg as she channeled Swayze.

Actually, I find this couple of scenes more interesting than the main story, and not just because of the swell newdity.  The possession of the bodies at such an intimate time, a man inhabiting the woman’s body, the two dudes getting back into the same intimate position to cover their actions, the husband thinking he had lasted a record time.  The opportunity to explore this for laughs, homophobia, gratuitous nudity, anything was HUGELY squandered.

Kudos for them at least taking a second to have the dude look at his watch and think they had been going at it for 30 minutes.  Good brief gag as it acknowledged the lost time and was funny.  Poorly executed, but excellent idea.

Another couple of goons from the future come to her room, but Sheena manages to fight them off.  Her friend Janet ends up accidentally getting killed.  Yada yada, Sheena’s life force is transferred into Janet’s dead body.  Sheena-in-Janet becomes a star again.

Sheena Easton is no great thespian, but she isn’t really the problem here.  The tone is so leaden that it is sleep-inducing; it literally induced me to sleep.  There are a couple of fun moments, but they are mostly squandered.  And you’re always on thin ice using mediocre stock music for a band on TV, especially if it is supposed to be world-changing.

Post-Post:

• Canadian DVD Title: Letoile Filante.
• Surprisingly, for such a slog, the director went on to helm 2 episodes of 24.  He was also the director of a better, earlier episode of Outer Limits.
• I’m cool with the goons from the future seeing their real selves in the mirror rather than the people they possessed.  But WTH would they be seeing their future clothes?