A hideous alien, or as he is known on that planet, some guy, is educating his son Ma’al to never eat food from the outside.  Hmmmm . . . thin ice already.

After the lesson, he dons a snappy hoodie with matching ensemble and runs out of the barn.  He is stopped by his brother T’sha.  Cut!

OK, enough with the apostrophes in science fiction!  It is just a really lazy way to convey otherness (although probably moreso in 1998).  Aliens don’t speak English.  We can spell their names any way we want.  Why would we arbitrarily stick in an apostrophe?  No one can agree on how to spell Moammar Khadafy’s name, but no one is sticking an apostrophe in it. ^[1]  A minor point, maybe, but it’s kept me from reading Dune.

Anyway, T’sha warns Ma’al not to go to the ruins of the old city again.  T’sha reminds him (i.e. us) that “the woods are filled with the beings.  Big smelly ones.  With razor teeth and claws like hooks.”  Ma’al says their grandfather told him the beings all died in camps years ago.  What the hell, Ma’al passes a US Interstate sign.  The city of ruins is Seattle.

In Seattle, we see a ragged group of humans.  They don’t have “razor teeth and claws like hooks” but I think the smelly part is accurate.  A woman says now that they have escaped the camps, they will reclaim their birth names.  She was 98801, but is now Rebecca.  Birth names are also reclaimed by David, Isaac, Ruth, Caleb, and Joshua.  Fine names, but I think the writers forgot their Big Book o’ Character Names that day and just picked up a Bible. ^[2]

Rebecca asks a teenage girl what name she would like.  We don’t get an answer (teenagers!), but a flashback informs us that this is a sequel to the fine episode The Camp and that the girl is 98843’s daughter.

Raggedy Alex whines about them being hungry.  Rebecca makes good arguments about not eating the low-hanging fruit they see all around them because it might be poison.  Alex ignores her and eats like a king; well, the king of Appletown anyway.  Others follow his lead but they all get sick.  Serves ’em right.  You’d think David, Isaac, Ruth, Caleb, and Joshua would know better than to eat an apple they were warned about.

They catch Ma’al snooping and chase him back to the farm where he lives.  Once there, they break into the grow-room where the aliens grow food for their family.  They grab some groceries and flee.  Unfortunately, Caleb is killed by a security device (the good kind — it doesn’t dial the police, but it does send a dozen steel blades through the intruder’s body).

The four humans go war with the alien family.  We see the aliens are actually pretty good eggs, and we see what humans will do when they’re hungry.  It is not worth going through point by point, but it is good stuff.

Other Stuff:

• ^[1] OK, a couple of spellings do.
• ^[2] Just joshing.  Where would they find a Bible in Hollywood?