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SEASON 1, EPISODE 8, SEPTEMBER 19, 1997
OVERALL IMPRESSIONS: Generally speaking, it takes a lot get me to sit down for this show - sickness, finding myself at gunpoint, losing a bet, the lack of anything else on TV during extended periods of no human contact whatsoever in an entirely book-free zone, etc. This episode was surprisingly tolerable, though, even though the plot appears to have been ripped off and it didn't have enough of Gabrielle in it.
KUDOS TO GABRIELLE: She really does a nice job of looking utterly confused by the questions and comments of an alien culture - which, judging by the number of times I've seen it handled poorly on this and other sci-fi shows, has to be a lot harder than it looks. I especially liked the way her character couldn't understand the amazement caused by a newborn who grows a couple feet within a day, and how she asked what a "year" is. She also does a really nice job during the opening scenes when her character delivers a baby.
SUPERFLUOUS COMMENTARY: Gabrielle's boyfriend at the time Robson Arms was shot, Tobias Mehler, had quite a few appearances on this show himself, all playing the same character. I've seen three of the episodes in which he appears, and those episodes are pretty good examples of why the show just doesn't do anything for me - it's a sad state of affairs when guest actors show up the regulars every time you turn the show on. Mehler's a pretty good actor anyway, but he's not the only one who could have made the rest of the cast look mediocre - and not by any stretch the only one I've seen do it. Among regulars, Richard Dean Anderson usually does a pretty decent job (he certainly does in this episode), and Teryl Rothery is pretty good, but it really strikes me as if most of the others could be replaced by lookalikes without anyone noticing. Unlike many shows which start out unremarkably and get better on the fly, this one actually seems to have started at its peak and worked its way downward. I grant you that I'm no expert on the show and haven't even seen half its episodes, but I've certainly seen enough to know that in every sense of the phrase, I've seen enough.
APPEARING HERE AND ELSEWHERE WITH GABRIELLE: Teryl Rothery, who plays Dr. Janet Frasier, also played Ariadne in the movie "Dead Man's Gun" (in the "The Great McDonacle" segment), a therapist in "A Moment of Truth Movie: To Walk Again," a running coach in "Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?" and Nancy Glover in "Video Voyeur: The Susan Wilson Story."
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