This could have been an early draft of Cocoon; or a final draft of Cocoon III.

Deputy Middleton is having a beer and watching the game at the local bar.  In walks a pretty hookery looking blonde who starts hitting on him.  Within seconds, they are back at his place, rolling around on the floor nekkid.

He gives her a pretty good ride, but she tearfully says, “It didn’t work.”  Not what a guy wants to hear.  Then she ages 50 years in just a few seconds.

Dr. Christina Markham is talking to her husband, the sheriff.  She is envious of her sister who has just made partner, bought a new house and is going to have a baby.  As a doctor, a hottie  and being married to the sheriff, she seems to be doing OK, though. But she really wants kids.

She examines the deputy’s babe, who is now a dried up corpse showing signs of several advanced diseases.  Christina goes to see her mother in a nursing home.  She is being taken care of by her late husband’s brother.  She has a touch of Alzheimer’s, but is still lucid enough to ask why her daughter has no children.  Moms.

The sheriff finds another dried up old body.  The doctor finds that both of the dead women have the same abnormality, a third ovary.

The deputy is at home during the day eating a sandwich — doesn’t this guy ever work?   He is surprised when a hot twenty-something walks into his house.  Even more surprised when he realizes it is his mother.  When he has a visitor at the door, his mother leaves and crawls in the sack with the first guy she sees who is not her son.  After doing the deed, she returns to her son’s house.  For the second time, he hears a woman say, “It didn’t work” and sees her age 50 years in a few seconds.

The doctor’s mother drags her brother in law out of bed in the middle of the night and leads him to a field.  She clears some weeds away from a rock.  Golden sparkles begin swirling around them and they are magically made 50 years younger.

Since she is young again and her husband is long dead, she wastes no time in taking her brother in law to her daughter’s bedroom to have the sex.

Indicating that this was not sex as usual, she is 9 months pregnant in just a few minutes — again, not what a guy wants to hear. Then her daughter the doctor delivers her 75 year old mother’s baby.  That Back to the Future controversy is starting to look pretty tame now.

Her mother describes how 50 years ago, she and and the other three dead women went on a picnic at the old Anderson Farm.  They encountered a naked golden alien — the last of her race — who impregnated each of them, or at  least supplied them with an egg that took 50 years to mature.  The alien then left a rock in the middle of the field which would make them young and fertile again 50 years in the future.  Luckily Anderson decided not to plow that field or build condos on it for 50 years.

Her mother ages again, but the alien has left her a gift — eliminating the Alzheimer’s that she had suffered.  So she will be able to watch the baby grow up as her daughter raises it as her own.

Yeah, that alien was really a sport — killing three women just because they couldn’t fertilize the one egg she gave them.  Then still making the the one survivor age back to be an old woman again.

Post-Post:

• Title on Canadian DVD:  Le Paradis.
• This is the first episode where I noticed “Please stand by” at the end of the opening credits narration.  There are also choppy act breaks.  It’s like they suddenly started showing commercials.  I know the show moved from Showtime to Sci-Fi at some point, but episode 17 is a strange place to do it.
• Title Analysis: Bears no relation to the episode.

I wish I could deprogram this from my line-up.  See what I did there?

Earth has been conquered by giant reptilian aliens which have brainwashed and enslaved humanity to be worshipful and submissive to their new masters; just like the media to Obama.

They might be murderous beasts, but they haven’t lost touch with their softer side.  Koltok has 2 human slaves draw him a warm bath in what appears to be the lobby of a hotel.  He then calls for bath oils to go into the viscous goo he bathes in, which already appears to be about 30-weight.  When one of the slaves drops the oil, Koltok slaps him across the room, killing him.

The other slave, Evan, is due to leave that day for a rejuvenation i.e. re-education update after bath time. However, he is abducted from the bus and awakens in a resistance facility run by Professor Davis (Brent Spiner).  To break his literally slavish devotion the lizards, Davis throws him around the room with a strength I doubt Spiner possesses, but gets no reaction.

They then leave him alone in a bedroom with a one way mirror.  When he sees his own reflection for the first time since his enslavement, he passes out.  Davis throws him into a bathtub and sprays him in the face with the shower.  Evan tries to escape, but just happens to open the door where is wife is staying . . . who just happens to be standing right by the door.

This leads to an interminable series of melodramatic scenes meant to bring Evan’s humanity to the surface again.  Finally, after learning of the death of their child, he is back to his old self (no, his old-old self) and agrees to go on a mission to kill Koltok.

Supposedly back from his rejuvenation, Evan is once again drawing Koltok a bath.  He brings the precious oils to him, but drops the bottle in the bath.  The oil has been replaced with some agent that hardens the goo he bathes in so he is trapped.  Evan beats him to death and takes his head back to resistance HQ.  Fortunately, no one along his route questions why he is carrying a blood-soaked white pillow case.  And this was no small head — this was one of those Ted Kennedy 25-pounders.

Unfortunately, the resistance operation is a ruse and this has all been an insidious plot to 1) kill Koltok so his even more eviller rival can succeed him, and 2) waste 45 minutes of my life.

Erich Anderson brings nothing to his role as Evan, though, to be fair he is basically playing a zombie for most of the episode.  His wife did not exactly leap off the screen either.

The big surprise and disappointment was Brent Spiner as the head of the resistance.  Whether it was simple miscasting, or maybe he is just too type-cast as Data, he is largely responsible for the failure of the episode.  Every time he spoke, I heard EmotionChipData, Lore or the young Noonian Soong.

There is also the strange decision to show only the reptile’s arm for most of the episode.  We only get a shot of the head and body near the very end.  While they are certainly monstrous, the reveal is not shocking enough to justify the wait.  And the reptilian arms are not alien enough to generate much suspense about what they are connected to.

Post-Post:

• Canadian disc title:  Les Déprogammeurs.

Sgt Linden Styles (Clancy Brown) is wheeled in on a gurney.  Oh, thank God, he’s going to get some much needed medical care!  Oh wait, there’s a priest and guards, he’s going to be executed for murder. Happy ending either way.

He assures the priest his soul is safe because he is innocent of the murders he was charged with.  The doctor gives him a lethal injection, and at 12:11 pronounces him dead.  But only mostly dead — even before the credits, he wakes up.  A government agent offers him a choice — try a new experimental procedure vital to national security, or get injected with the real juice.

The agent upgrades the security clearance of Style’s doctor, Kersaw.  He then shows her the remains of an alien captured a year ago and stored in a . . . hey that’s the same exact yellow cryo unit as was used last week in The Heist.  I understand re-using props, but let’s space it out, people!  She is ordered to merge the alien DNA with that of Styles.

The next morning, Kersaw begins giving Styles a series of injections.  They are to be so painful that he is strapped down.  Soon he begins growing scaly and scabrous.  This guy was treated better by the Dharma Initiative.

As he further transforms into an alien, he uses his increased strength to escape from the facility where he was being held.  Little does he know that this was part of the plan — a test to see if the military can capture such an alien.

The army uses Kersaw to lure Styles into an ambush.  Before they can fire on Styles, they are disabled by a high-pitched noise which is followed by the appearance of aliens looking much like him.

After they disappear, taking Styles with them, Kersaw tells the agent that just as the Army was testing Styles — the aliens were testing the humans.  They made the alien bodies available to see what humans would do with them.

A good episode with great performances by Clancy Brown and Alan Rachins as the agent.  Unfortunately, Dr. Kersaw was a little weak — her lapel-grabbing revelation at the end is fairly laughable.  And the general was grossly miscast.

The biggest stars of the episode are the make-up and the great set including the pod where Styles was kept.  And, of course, the ubiquitous cryo unit which I Iook forward to seeing next week.

Post-Post:

• Might as well get some use out of these Canadian discs. French title:  Injection Fatale.
• Clancy Brown was in the Dharma Initiative and Alan Rachins was in Dharma and Greg.  Coincidence?

A group of mercenaries hijack a truck expecting to find a cache of Stinger missiles inside.  Fortunately for them, The US Army ships these deadly weapons in UPS trucks with just a padlock on the back door, and takes routes that lead them down narrow deserted alleys.

When they open the door, they are surprised by a soldier firing at them, but are able to take him down pretty easily.  Then they are surprised that the truck was transporting a cryo unit and not missiles.  My first assumption was it was stone crabs for some general on the taxpayer dime, but a sharp eye will catch the letters EBE on the unit.

And you better have a sharp eye. When they first see the unit, it clearly says EBE. After they fire back at the soldier, it still says EBE in two separate shots.  But for some reason, the most important shot of the container just before the credits has the unit scarred by gunfire so the EBE is unreadable.  So they screwed up on the order of the shots, and then why would you obliterate the most important word which sets up the episode?

There is another soldier, Washington, hiding in the truck.  After she is subdued, one of the mercs fires at the container, breaking the seal.  When the gang threatens the soldier to get information, an alien shoots out of the crate and turns one of the men to ice.  For no apparent reason, the Major shoots the ice-man and he crumbles like Robert Patrick in T2.  The alien zips around the warehouse, and for reasons I can’t figure, the soldiers open fire on the crate again — the one place they know the alien ain’t.

They decide to abandon the warehouse, but find the door iced over.  The Major asks, “What the hell? Where’d this ice come from?” after he just saw an alien turn one of his crew into an ice-man.  Yeah, what a conundrum.

They search the warehouse for the alien and a way to escape.  That really is the next 20 minutes of the episode.  Think of how suspenseful it was when the crew of the Nostromo was searching for their alien.  This is nothing like that.

They aren’t given much to do, but a lot of the problem is the cast.  Colm Feore is terrible as the beret-wearing major (he would later go on to be terrible as the President’s husband (referred to gratingly as “the First Gentleman”) in a season of 24).  Where’s Michael Ironside when you need him?  Jasmine Guy is simply not believable as the soldier who is willing to be tortured with a welding torch to protect the alien.  There really is not one person to care about in this group.

There is just so much that makes no sense.  Washington sets the major’s sleeve on fire so the heat will draw the alien.  The major just waves his arm above his head rather than, say, taking off his flaming coat, or rolling on the ground.

Somehow the neon in a sign is able to kill the alien because it is “mostly made of helium.”  Not really sure what’s keeping it from floating away, then.

Washington and one of the mercs are able to force an icy door open to escape.  In the last shot, we hear a police dispatcher and see a frozen police officer.  Did Washington just leave the door open and not secure the building?  That can’t be right because the alien was already dead.  Did the officer earlier just stroll in the front door when the whole group could no find a way out of the building?  Why would the police have been called anyway?

A  disappointing episode.

Post-Post:

• On the plus side, Colm Feore was excellent in Stephen King’s Storm of the Century.
• Written, surprisingly, by Steven Barnes who also wrote the excellent Stitch in Time.
• Also surprising, it was directed by Brad Turner who directed almost 2 days worth of 24.

A group of miners go down in the elevator to a shaft where they start swinging picks — a process I thought was long outdated.  Quickly, they punch a hole into a cavern which is giving off a stench.

Sadly, it is a salt mine so there is no methane “dealt it / smelt” it reference to be made.

They find bones on the ground inside, but that is nothing compared to the parasitic phallic worms dangling from the ceiling which zing themselves at the men, and burrow inside them.

At a diner in town, Howie (Neil Patrick Harris) runs in to tell his sister Sheila that they have found a dinosaur in the mine.  Like all rural mining towns, this one has a beautiful paleo-biologist.  Howie is a little slow, so his sister Sheila thinks maybe the miners are pulling his Doogie.  However, she puts on her paleo-biologist hat and goes down into the mine.

She identifies the bones as a stegosaurus.  The mine foreman gives her 2 hours to clear out the bones.  While moving the bones from the mine to the lab (i.e. her kitchen), one of the infected miners, Jake, gets rough hitting on Sheila, Howie tries to intercede and gets punched in the face.  When some other miners show up, Jake backs off.

At the diner, Jake tries the same thing with cute waitress Charlotte.  She also resists his advances, but he grabs her head and shoots a snot-rocket parasite from his nose into her ear.  After few seconds of pain, she gives Jake a big amorous smile and they start making out on the counter.

There is an unintended laugh as one of his miner buddies sees what Jake did, grabs a dude in the diner and similarly launches a snot-rocket at him.  The editing makes it look like he did so in order to get some man-lovin’ of his own.  Mostly it just turned into a free-for-all at the diner — and not in the good way.

Back at Sheila’s house, she is examining the bones while Howie is examining a slug. Sheila seems to find it amusing that Howie is pouring salt on a slug, which is even worse than pulling the wings off flies.  Sheila sends him to the diner to pick-up dinner, but he hears a din before they dine — there is passes chaos in the streets.

While he’s gone, another infectee, Evan, breaks in and launches a parasite at Sheila. When Howie gets back, Evan tries to infect him too.  Apparently Doogie’s brain is not up to the parasite’s standards, so it crawls back out of his nostril disappointed.  He decides to try to salt trick on the slug-like parasite — this time, I approve — but this time, it brings the parasite back to life.  So maybe I was too quick on that whole “approval” thing.  At least when Howie places it in the sunlight, it bursts into flames.

When his infected sister is abusive to him that night, he ties her to a tree with a garden hose. His theory is that the parasites will die when the sun comes up.  Sure enough, when the sun comes up the next morning, Sheila is in pain until the parasite rockets out of her nose and bursts into flames, fortunately in that order.  How the sunlight affected it inside her skull is not explained.

Trying to figure out where the infected people might be gathered, Sheila asks Howie what happened to the parasite that rejected him.  He tells her that he poured salt on it, and that brought it back to life.  To the salt mines, they go.

Fortunately, despite being a little slow, Howie’s late father taught him how to wire up dynamite.  He explodes the mine entrances while the zombies were out for the evening.  When they are caught outside in the sunlight, the parasites start exiting as quickly as possible — not just through ears and noses, but right through the skin on the neck and face.

An OK episode really brought to life by a great performance by NPH.  And his hot paleo-biologist sister.