Ultraseven Episode #6: The Dark Zone

[heroforhirerob]

The Story; An alien starbase is about to collide with Earth and both sides try to resolve the situation. Meanwhile, Anne and Dan discover a wounded alien. The potential for a decent story is here, but the execution leaves something to be desired, Both sides were WAY too trigger happy. Bringing nukes to within firing range of that floating city would be considered a declaration of war by most rational civilizations. Also, the Pegassans have advanced enough weaponry to wipe out the planet, but have NOTHING to defend themselves from a race that is...primitive to them...really? Even if they were arrogant...I'm sure they have sensors that would tell them the potential of the human race's weapons. The end is interesting..and kind of tragic, but..overall...doesn't really gel for me..

The Seijin: The Pegassa alien looks alright for what he is....though the effect of this friendly alien(for a change) is completely erased when you realize he had sinister intentions all along.

The SPFX: The floating space city is pretty bland, but the effects for the darkness covered Pegassan is pretty good.

The Other Stuff: Mostly mentioned above...there were probably many other ways to resolve the crisis in the episode without resorting to violence, but then...maybe our propensity for shooting first was the point. Still, this one didn't quite work for me overall.

[lhb412]

I thought the images of the space city were executed pretty dang well, especially considering the limitations of a TV budgets and small models.

[RaymondBurr]

[eabaker]

I dug this episode, and I didn't think that the revelation that the Pegassan was set to blow up the Earth undercut the uniqueness of his appearing as a friendly alien at all. Remember, by the time he was actually going to set of the bombs, Pegassa should have already collided with the Earth; he procrastinated because he actually did like us, and felt conflicted about his mission.

I thought the concepts in this episode were particularly strong, and I loved the effect of the Pegassan hiding in the Dark Zone.

I am, however, starting to get a little tired of sitting through launch procedures in almost every episode. Cut 20 seconds out of the launche sequence, and that's 20 seconds more human/alien drama we could have had.

[Pkmatrix]