There’s a new player in town. A glowing ball of energy deposits a woman dressed in black who never, under any circumstances, stops doing yoga. She can fire energy beams from her hands and she is determined to track down the advocacy and eliminate them. She does this by finding all the aliens she possibly can, ordering them to tell her where the advocacy is, and when they refuse, killing them. She’s… not a very good tracker.

Team Blackwood gets suspicious when the alien bodies start piling up. Blackwood thinks maybe there are new aliens in town. They set a trap by luring some aliens to a warehouse, hoping the tracker will show up. She does and starts blasting everything she sees. Because they’re stupid, the aliens think Suzanne is the tracker and run off to report to the advocacy. The tracker disappears and everything’s back to square one.

The tracker takes Ironhorse captive and amidst unnecessary yoga moves explains that she’s Q’Tara from the planet Q’arto and she’s here to stop the Mortaxians. Ironhorse decides they have a common enemy and can help each other. He rushes home to tell the others.

The advocacy decides to take the offensive, leading their troops into battle, and heads out to ambush their enemies.

The whole team goes to Q’Tara’s hideout to discuss strategy, but the Mortaxians follow them. A shootout ensues in which Q’Tara and all of Team Blackwood are gunned down. Having accomplished this, the Mortaxians leave. It’s not made clear whether the advocacy has been taken out or why they stop the assault after their enemies have been overwhelmed, but not killed.

Some time later, Q’Tara fixes herself – having been revealed to be a robot – and then heals team Blackwood. She has to go now, but promises to return in a year to continue the fight. Blackwood is delighted to have found new aliens who are friendly. But once he’s out of earshot, Q’Tara radios back to her planet that humans are still endangered as a potential food source. Uh-oh!

Q’Tara has to be the cheesiest thing I’ve ever seen in just about anything. Like seriously, Ed Wood himself couldn’t have out-cheesed this lady. Like so much in this show, she has to be seen to be believed. She’s just so over-the-top. She’s got some serious 80’s hair, sleeps leaned against the wall like a plank, and then there’s all the ridiculous yoga moves, a hilarious warble to her voice, and a stilted and laughable delivery for all her lines.

In addition, the whole episode is completely disjointed. Plot threads are introduced and then dropped, the action scenes are poorly staged and nonsensical, and the whole thing is just so utterly cornball that I challenge anyone to make it through without laughing. In short, it’s a fitting end to a season made up almost entirely of trash.

But we made it through! Hooray! We’re finally done!!

Wait, what? There … there’s another season?! …

SON OF A … !!

*sigh*

Okay.

*Does shot of whiskey, slams the glass down on the counter*

Let’s do this.

We open with a construction worker who is totally losing his shit because he thinks he found a flying saucer. I got a bit excited for a second, thinking we were going to see a war machine, but alas, it’s just a tiny capsule. The military takes possession of the capsule and takes it to a bunker in a remote location. They contact Team Blackwood to have a look. No sooner do they get there, however, than an Air Force colonel shows up and takes charge, having been authorized to do so by authorities higher up than Ironhorse’s boss. Blackwood and his people are salty about it, but cooperate.

The colonel pokes and prods at the capsule with drills and lasers but can’t get it open. He’s ready to give up, but Blackwood suggests using sonic waves to get it open because Dr. Forrester had been working along those lines back in the day. They try it and it works. The capsule unscrews – just like the cylinders in the original film! That bit is nifty. Inside is a perfectly preserved alien and Blackwood just can’t wait to dissect it. But the colonel overrules him and decides to let the alien sit overnight. For… reasons.

That night the colonel sneaks into the lab wearing a Spider-Man costume and carrying some lube… No, just kidding. Actually he’s carrying a petri dish and a syringe. He takes some samples and sneaks away with them. For… reasons.

So… guess what happens next. No, seriously, see if you can guess…

It’s alive! The alien’s not dead! Did you guess correctly? Of course you did. It pops out of the capsule and immediately goes into… wait for it… the air ducts! I guess while it was chillin’ in that capsule, it must’ve watched a lot of sci-fi movies.

Team Blackwood and the air force people discover that the alien is missing and begin searching for it. Needless to say, no one thinks to check the air ducts.

The colonel decides to inject the alien fluid he extracted last night into the soft tissue under his tongue. I guess he figures it’ll get him high. Just kidding. He thinks he’ll absorb the alien’s knowledge. The alien overhears this from the air duct and thinks it’s a fantastic idea. It grabs a power cable and hacks into the colonel’s computer to tell him so. Encouraged by this, the colonel goes ahead and does it. And… nothing happens.

Blackwood is on the phone with Norton. The alien seizes the opportunity and grabs the power cable again, hacking into Noron’s computer and absorbing all their data. Now it knows about the Earth bacteria and how to defeat it with radiation. It makes a beeline for the bunker’s nuclear reactor and steals some plutonium. It runs amok, spreading radiation everywhere so it will be safe from the bacteria. Blackwood realizes what the alien is doing, watching the radiation spread on a monitor (man, that critter moves fast.).

Realizing the soldiers are coming, the alien decides to hide by taking over the colonel’s body. But Blackwood uses his magic tuning fork to figure out the alien has done this. Having saturated the bunker with radiation, the alien decides to… leave. In a car. Ironhorse uses the air ducts to get to the lab, because I guess radiation doesn’t like air ducts or something, and uses the laser to fry the escaping alien.

By any objective measure, this episode is a mess. The story is as half-baked as anything else this series has done, a blatant mix of The Thing From Another World and Alien, only this time the production values are so shameless as to be downright embarrassing, even for this show. Every time we see the alien moving through the air ducts, it’s the same goddamn shot! At one point when it attacks someone, the shot of the alien pouncing is lifted from another episode. And the shot used is an exterior shot, inserted into an interior scene. I mean, it’s just pitiful.

All that said… I have to confess I enjoyed it. The monster-on-the-loose plot, though derivative, was entertaining, and the alien stayed in its natural form for the bulk of the episode, which was a refreshing change of pace. I’m not saying it was a particularly good episode, mind you, but it held my attention more than the previous several episodes, which have been pretty dull for the most part. So I guess the lesson here is that you don’t need good writing or production values to deliver solid entertainment. You just need a guy in a monster suit.

We open in a nightclub where a dude is trying to score. He leaves with a woman and they head for his hotel room. In the elevator, he reveals he’s a cop and puts her under arrest. For prostitution, I guess. Even though she never quoted him any rates or anything, so I’m really not sure what’s going on here. Turns out she’s an alien, though, and she cold cocks him and throws him in the back of a van with some other people. Seems the aliens are kidnapping people to do experiments on them in hopes of producing a virus that will send humans into a blind rage so they start attacking and killing each other.

28 days later, Blackwood wakes up from a coma… wait, no. Blackwood and the others are posing as members of the DEA to work with the Chicago PD, ostensibly to combat a new drug that people are dying from. Obviously in reality, they’re after the aliens.

The experiments aren’t going well, so the envoy from the Advocacy bumps off the lead scientist and takes charge of the situation herself. Because that’s going to end well for her.

A homeless dude finds a body in a dumpster. The cops and Team Blackwood go to investigate and determine it’s another drug victim. While they’re at the crime scene, the lead detective gets a call – the DEA has never heard of Blackwood! She arrests the whole team on the spot for impersonating government officials. Uh-oh!

But it’s okay. She calls their boss and he clears everything and tells her they really are government agents and they’re after terrorists. “You know,” she says, “you could have saved us all a lot of trouble if you’d told me that up front.” Hey, there’s a thought.

The aliens succeed in creating their drug. They test it out on Cop Guy and he goes totally ape shit. They unleash him in a titty bar and he hulks out and trashes everyone and everything in his path. Maybe I’ve missed the point of this show. Is this actually a brilliant comedy and the joke just went over my head? Someone calls the cops. Evidently Cop Guy still has the presence of mind to know when to cut and run, so he hightails it back to the car and they take off with the cops in pursuit. Realizing they can’t get away, the the aliens drive the car into the lake.

The lead detective is really cut up over the death of whats-his-face, and for some reason she’s able to figure out that Team Blackwood isn’t after terrorists. Inexplicably, Blackwood decides to spill the beans to her about everything. They go to a mob boss that she has close ties with, who tells them where to find the aliens. Yeah, that makes sense.

The alien plan has backfired magnificently. A careless orderly leaves both a supply of the highly-addictive rage drugs *and* the keys to the cages within reach of one of the prisoners. It’s rage-a-palooza as the drug-crazed prisoners escape and rip the aliens apart. Team Blackwood and the police arrive just in time to find the aliens have already done their work for them.

Realizing the aliens are utterly incompetent, Blackwood decides there’s no need to keep hunting them and retires to the country where he becomes a beekeeper. This is the final episode.

No. No, it isn’t. There’s more.

This episode is stupid. There’s not much to say beyond that. It’s just bloody stupid. There’s no suspense, the premise isn’t interesting, there’s nothing noteworthy happening with the characters. It’s just some stuff that’s happening. There it is.

Uh-oh! The aliens are breeding! And the baby aliens are so cute! With their cute little cyclops eyes and their cute little spindly arms! Aww! We don’t see anything of their reproductive process – I guess we can be grateful for that. Despite my curiosity, anything this show would’ve come up with probably would’ve been stupid as hell. Anyway, the babies need to be kept cold, so the aliens decide to move them into a warehouse full of, like, liquid nitrogen or something.

In Washington, D.C., some douchebag goes into a Korean bathhouse, says some racist shit to the owner, then goes into the sauna. There he meets a shadowy figure in a bathrobe, his face hidden by a hood, who totally isn’t John Colicos. In a gravelly voice that is totally not instantly recognizable as John Colicos, the shadowy figure tells the douchebag that he needs to investigate the Blackwood project. Evidently Douchebag is a reporter looking for a story. When Douchebag asks why, Not John Colicos tells him his ex-wife is involved. It’s Suzanne! Gasp! He also says that Team Blackwood is rounding up illegal aliens and exterminating them. Which… I guess is kind of true.

While Team Blackwood hand-waves their way through solving the latest alien plot, Douchebag shows up to manipulate his family into giving them a story. He tells Suzanne he’s sorry and wants to make things right and blah blah blah vomit. He takes her out to dinner and continues to lay on the sleaze. When Suzanne doesn’t bite, he shifts tactics and tells her he knows the Blackwood project is killing illegal aliens. She should just laugh in his face, but instead she’s hurt and angry. At least she has the good sense to walk out on him.

Douchebag goes back to the sauna for another meeting with Not John Colicos. I forget what they talked about because it’s been a week since I watched it and I probably wasn’t paying attention anyway. I could go back and watch the scene again to refresh my memory, but I don’t care enough. The important part of the scene is that when Douchebag goes away, the camera dollies in on the shadowy figure as he pulls back his hood to reveal… he’s John Colicos! Gasp! Wait, not gasp. I already knew that. With his eyes wide, Colicos looks right at the camera and lets out that trademark cackle. Because he’s John Colicos and that’s what John Colicos is for.

Blackwood and Ironhorse track the aliens to the warehouse. They go inside and find a bunch of eggs that look like scaly nutsacks. They decide to take one back to base for Suzanne to examine. Once back at the lab, it hatches and attacks Suzanne. Realizing the aliens are breeding, they decide to raid the warehouse and kill everything in sight.

But Douchebag decides to follow them with a camera crew. They witness the battle but are then attacked by aliens. Team Blackwood comes to the rescue, but they’re too late to save the camera crew. Sadly, Douchebag survives. Realizing Team Blackwood is killing aliens from outer space and not Mexico, he calms down.

God, I hope Douchebag is not going to be a recurring character. He is neither interesting nor fun. He’s just… a douchebag.

This episode really needed more John Colicos. But then *all* the episodes need more John Colicos. It was nice to see Quinn again, but also confusing. When we saw him last, he was trying to broker a truce to facilitate a peaceful transition to alien rule while preserving a small percentage of the human population. When Blackwood saved his life, it seemed they’d reached some kind of understanding, or at least a degree of mutual respect. But here it seems like he’s just generally trying to disrupt things. It’s not even clear what his end game is. Why tell the reporter that Blackwood is killing illegal aliens? What does he have to gain from that? If the reporter investigates, either he’ll come up empty or he’ll learn the truth. Either way, how does that advance Quinn’s agenda? It just doesn’t add up.

This isn’t a particularly good episode, but it’s not an especially bad one either. It’s just kind of ho-hum. Well, whatever. Hopefully the next episode will have more John Colicos. Not holding my breath.

In a battle with the aliens, Ironhorse accidentally guns down an innocent woman. It’s an honest mistake, but it sends him spiraling into depression and guilt, especially after he attends her funeral. He visits a therapist but doesn’t find the sessions productive.

Meanwhile, the aliens have decided to arm themselves with ray guns. But a key component of the ray guns is rubies, and they’ll need a lot of them. One of the alien leaders proposes stealing the rubies, but the others think that’s too dangerous, so they decide they’ll all have to get jobs and save up. Or rob a bunch of banks. Because robbing banks isn’t dangerous at all. Sigh. Okay, moving on.

The husband of the woman Ironhorse killed goes totally batshit insane and decides to take revenge on Ironhorse. This works out nicely because Ironhorse is also going kind of insane. He alternates between being way too hesitant to pursue obvious leads because they might get someone hurt and being way too gung-ho on leads that aren’t promising. He snaps at his co-workers and practically has a nervous breakdown. Blackwood goes to Ironhorse’s superior and gets permission to order Ironhorse to take some time off.

Ironhorse leaves to go to Blackwood’s cabin, but before he gets there, the dead chick’s husband attacks with a radio-controlled helicopter and runs him off the road. He then takes Ironhorse to a secluded area to kill him.

While all this is going on, the aliens pull a bunch of heists on armored cars to get the money to buy the rubies. They go to a super-sexy green-eyed woman who practically has an on-camera orgasm at the thought of selling rubies to literally anyone. She’s a really, *really* weird character.

Ironhorse awakens tied up in a room. He distracts Crazy Guy with logic, managing to loosen his bonds while Crazy Guy is looking right at him. He then Captain Kirks his way out of the situation, beating the guy senseless and tying him up instead.

Throwing the guy in the passenger seat of the van, Ironhorse charges in to join the rest of the team, who are going after the aliens. Ironhorse catches up with the armored car the aliens have stolen and convinces Crazy Guy to use his radio controlled helicopter to blow up the aliens, since they’re the ones who are really responsible for his wife’s death. He does so and then I guess they’re friends now or something.

This could have been a really good character-driven episode, and it’s nice to see Ironhorse in the spotlight, but it’s so sloppily rendered that it ultimately does a big belly-flop. For starters, the pacing is off. It’s just slow and ponderous. The scenes with Ironhorse and the therapist are awkward, with lots of lengthy pauses. I guess it’s supposed to be dramatic, but it’s just kind of bland. Ditto for the scenes where Ironhorse is breaking down in front of Blackwood and the others.

Conversely, the scenes with the aliens are ridiculous as usual, undermining what’s clearly supposed to be a serious dramatic episode. The woman selling the rubies has to be seen to be believed. She chews the scenery every time she’s on screen, coming across like Diana from V, but then she doesn’t do anything. I kept waiting for her to be up to something, to double-cross the aliens or otherwise do something unexpected, but she’s just weird and creepy for no obvious reason, then disappears from the episode without any kind of pay-off. What the hell, episode?!

And then there’s Crazy Guy. He’s so over-the-top, acting less like a grieving husband and more like a serial killer. Seriously, the dude has a real Francis Dollarhyde vibe. It’s hard to feel any real sympathy for him because he’s just so damn creepy. Also, he clearly understands that not only was his wife’s death an accident, but that Ironhorse feels deeply guilty about it. He sees the look of horror and shame on Ironhorse’s face when they’re putting his wife’s body into the ambulance, and then he sees Ironhorse attending the funeral. Ironhorse was in uniform during the incident, so it’s not like he was some mugger or psycho. He was just a soldier doing his duty. The incident is tragic, yes, but an accident, and any reasonable person would know that.

It’s rather unfortunate, because there’s real potential here. I can only imagine the weight of guilt soldiers and police officers must feel when they’ve accidentally gunned down an innocent person while performing their duty. That’s certainly a topic worth exploring. But it’s all so melodramatic on the one hand and fairly superficial on the other that it really doesn’t address the issue in any meaningful way.

And we end with Ironhorse and Crazy Guy just standing side-by-side as if they’ve had this great reconciliation. Never mind the fact that this guy is clearly unstable and guilty of assault with a deadly weapon and attempted murder. But I guess we’re not going to address that. I know Ironhorse feels guilty for killing this guy’s wife, but come on, man, there’s public safety to consider here.

Jesus Christ, this show is stupid.

Team Blackwood hosts a meeting of representatives from around the worlds to exchange information about the alien threat. Blackwood hogs the show, however, recounting his various adventures via flashback.

Turns out there’s an alien hidden among the dignitaries who tells the aliens where the meeting is. The alien army shows up and the building is under seige. Blackwood uses his stupid tuning fork to focus his thoughts and he gets the alien to out itself by suggesting they surrender to the aliens. There’s a shootout and the aliens are of course defeated.

The bulk of this episode consists of clips from previous episodes and essentially serves as a recap of what’s happened so far. So… I guess just re-read my previous reviews.

The best line of dialogue occurs in the alien lair when one of the alien leaders is watching TV and says, “I don’t understand why I enjoy watching this!”

………………………….*sigh*…………………………..

Okay. We start with a trio of aliens planning to disperse some kind of toxin in a mall. They booger it up and get caught by a mall guard. Two of them bolt but one of them is a slow poke because the plot necessitates it. Turtle Martian winds up in a clothing store and we have an uncomfortably rapey scene where he takes over a pregnant lady. Now we have a pregnant alien. In the episode’s only cute moment, the newly pregnant alien shouts “I hate this!”

Pregnant alien is rushed to the hospital and gives birth. The alien/human hybrid child looks perfectly normal until it starts rapidly growing, reaching the size of an eight-year-old within hours. Team Blackwood shows up and cordons off the hospital. And that’s pretty much all they do in this episode.

The hybrid child suddenly mutates into a ridiculous-looking monster and starts killing everything in sight. Both humans and aliens search the hospital for the creature. Mama alien decides she needs to re-absorb her child for whatever-the-fuck reason, but the other aliens don’t like that idea so they kill her.

Monster baby kills a bunch of redshirts until Blackwood finds it and throws it on the floor. It splits open like a pinata and a normal baby comes out. What should have been the baby’s grandparents show up and take possession, but they’re aliens.

And that’s about it.

Jesus…. This. Episode. Is. Dumb.

It’s pretty much a knock-off of “It’s Alive” but without the campy charm. A nearly endless series of scenes where no-name characters wander off to die. There’s nothing remotely interesting about this episode. It’s not even especially fun. So I guess we have our answer. Those two good episodes were evidently a fluke and we’re back to the normal level of terrible.

God, this show sucks.

Needless to say, as we sat down to watch this one I was paying close attention to the credits to see if John Colicos was going to be in it. Sadly, he’s not, but I’m sure we’ll be seeing him again soon. However, there were two pleasant surprises. One is that Ann Robinson once again returns as Sylvia VanBuren, this time in a more prominent role. The other is that this episode was penned by the legendary D.C. Fontana of Star Trek fame. So even though I was disappointed that Quinn wasn’t back, I had a feeling this episode would at least be above average. And it was.

The aliens decide to target Earth’s communication systems, figuring that would be a good way to disrupt the opposition. In one fell swoop, they knock out long-distance communications throughout much of North America, causing some explosions and killing a few people in the process. It’s probably the most effective attack they’ve pulled on the show thus far. But it’s only one strike, and to continue the assault, they’ll need a mobile power source. So they dispatch a team of three to obtain a vehicle with a generator large enough to run their equipment.

The trio decides to steal the bodies of some homeless people in the Portland area who have access to a lot where a bunch of tractor trailers are kept. But there’s a witness to the body-snatching – Molly, another homeless person. She goes in search of help and winds up at the care center where Sylvia lives. The staff is mean to her and Sylvia, in a rare lucid moment, steps in to take Molly under her wing. Later, when Sylvia has an episode and the staff is rough with her, Molly witnesses the event and decides she and Sylvia would be better off elsewhere. She also overhears Sylvia screaming about aliens, so she figures she can be open with her about what she saw.

When Blackwood gets word that Sylvia has gone missing, he loses his shit and instructs the team to drop everything and aid in the search. He has Norton hit the web while he and Suzanne pound the pavement in the Portland area.

Meanwhile, Sylvia and Molly arrive at the spot where the body-snatching took place. There’s little of value that can happen here, but Sylvia does sense that something bad happened here, which gives Molly some measure of validation. They head for the truck depot where Sylvia manages to score some bread for the both of them.

Around this time, the aliens are having problems of their own. They’re harassed by a mean-spirited security guard who doesn’t want them hanging around the depot. And they can’t kill him – at least not yet – without attracting unwanted attention. The bodies that the aliens thought would allow them to operate under the radar have in fact become a liability because they’re “unwanted.” Eventually, though, the time is right and they eliminate the security guard, leaving them free to complete their mission.

After lots of false starts, Blackwood and Suzanne get a lead on where Sylvia might be. It’s a long shot, but they decide to try the truck depot, since lots of homeless people go there for handouts.

Molly happens into the wrong place at the wrong time and the aliens kill her. Sylvia witnesses it and is both horrified and terrified. The aliens chase her and it looks hopeless, but Blackwood and Suzanne arrive just in time and take her to safety. She tells them the aliens are here, they call Ironhorse for backup, and the whole thing is wrapped up pretty quickly. But not without a personal cost to Sylvia.

Coming on the heels of the rip-roaring adventure of the previous episode, there was probably no way this one wasn’t going to feel like a let-down. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt that this was a different but no less effective story. It emerged as something of a heartbreaking look at the bleak lives of the homeless, and the death of Molly after such an empty existence really hit home. Guest characters die all the time on this show, but it’s usually a joke at best or boring at worst. But this time it actually had an impact. Even the aliens experience the unforgiving cruelty of a society that views some lives as having no value. The whole episode is set against a snowy winter backdrop and you can almost feel the biting cold. It’s perhaps an obvious choice, but an effective one.

Ann Robinson really shines in this episode, from her quiet compassion when she first meets Molly, to her quivering terror as an alien wearing her friend’s face tries to kill her, to sheer childlike joy at a new experience: “I’ve never ridden in a truck before!” Up to this point she’s been little more than a plot device, but in this episode she gets to be a person. That’s nice to see.

Even the usually bland Team Blackwood thrives under Fontana’s skilled supervision. Other writers have tried to write playful banter for these characters, but it’s always forced and tacky. But in this episode it flows naturally and is actually funny. The core group, usually wooden and dead, is suddenly alive and believable. The value of a writer who knows what they’re doing cannot be underestimated.

So that’s two in a row. Does this mean the producers finally realized they needed actual writers to deliver a quality show? Will this winning streak continue? I guess we’ll see.

So last time we left off on what may or may not have been a cliffhanger. You’ve been waiting with baited breath (or not) to find out whether Harrison Blackwood would go galloping off to rescue his beloved or just shrug and go on with his life. And now you’ll have the answer. As we sat down to start the next episode, my wife asked if I wanted to bet on whether it would be a continuation of the previous episode or not, but I didn’t like the odds, so I declined. And the answer is…

Nope. That last episode was a one-shot. The most poorly structured and sloppily wrapped-up episode so far. Holy fuck. Oh, well. I guess that’s not surprising given the show’s track record so far. This show has consistently proven to be the master of disappointment. But buckle up, kiddos, cause shit’s about to get real! Things take a surprising and delightful turn – as none other than John Colicos joins the cast!

For those of you reading this who were born within the past five minutes, that name might not mean anything. But for us old-timers, John Colicos was a big name in sci-fi back in the day. For one thing, he played the first Klingon ever to appear in Star Trek (not counting a brief shot of some background extras). He was also instrumental in determining the look of the Klingons. When he went to the make-up room, the Klingon design hadn’t been determined yet, so the make-up artist asked him what he wanted to look like. “Make me look like Ghengis Khan,” he said. “That’s what the Klingons make me think of.” And thus the most famous alien race in all of sci-fi was born. But that’s not his only claim to fame. Over a decade later, he would turn in a memorable performance as the traitorous Baltar on the original Battlestar Galactica. So the actor’s sci-fi pedigree was quite firmly established by the late 80s. But on to the episode…

We open with the mysterious Quinn (Colicos) being pursued by aliens disguised as cops. As they chase him down an alley, he outwits them by leaving his hat in plain sight with a bomb hidden under it. The sole survivor of the aliens chases him onto a rooftop. Quinn leaps from one building to the next, his black trenchcoat fluttering, and lands safely. His pursuer jumps also but doesn’t quite make it, grabbing hold of the edge of the building and reaching up, asking Quinn to help. Quinn just looks him in the eyes and coldly says, “To life immortal… sucker.” And the alien falls to his death while Quinn cracks that wonderfully wicked John Colicos grin.

Back at the ranch, Blackwood is not remotely upset by the recent loss of his One True Love and decides to go buy some art. Turns out Quinn is a world-renowned artist and Blackwood is a huge fan. Ironhorse is concerned that Blackwood will miss their presentation at the U.N., but Blackwood promises he’ll be back in time.

Quinn’s limo collects Blackwood and spirits him away, blindfolded, to a warehouse where Quinn will unveil his latest work for Blackwood. This turns out to be a disappointment – it’s just some cornball lasers and Jared Martin has to act like he’s blown away by it. To be fair, he does as convincing a job as can be expected under the circumstances. Blackwood offers to buy the piece, but Quin says he’ll give it to him for free. Not only that, but he gives Blackwood a nifty little friendship bracelet to boot. Blackwood is bowled over by Quinn’s generosity, and Quinn launches into a speech about how he draws his inspiration from the wonders of the cosmos, where one can find life immortal. Blackwood recognizes the catch phrase and asks if Quinn has been in contact with aliens. Quinn reveals that he hasn’t just been in contact with aliens – he *is* an alien! Blackwood tries to escape, but the bracelet Quinn gave him is actually an alien device that Quinn can use like an invisible leash. Blackwood asks what he wants and he says he wants to broker peace between his people and humanity. But before he can elaborate, Aliens burst in and Quinn flees, dragging Blackwood with him.

They escape through a secret door, which also contains a booby trap. As the aliens pursue, a bomb goes off. Quinn leads Blackwood to his secret lair hidden away in the New York subway system. There Quinn tells his full story. He was the general who led the invasion of Earth in 1953. But when his comrades succumbed to Earth’s bacteria, he found that he was immune. Unable to continue the assault alone, and with the homeworld refusing to send reinforcements, he stole a human body to blend in with the populace and has been living among them ever since. Now the other aliens want him so they can harvest the organ that makes him immune to the bacteria, and they know what he looks like, so they’ve been constantly pursuing him. Blackwood asks why he doesn’t just change bodies, and he explains that the same genetic anomaly that makes him immune to the bacteria also traps him in this body.

Quinn thinks that he can get the aliens to stop chasing him if he can convince the humans to surrender. He thinks that he’ll be hailed a hero and crowned absolute ruler of his people, and in return for Blackwood’s help, Quinn will spare ten percent of the world’s population, to be kept on reservations far from his people. And Quinn will place Blackwood in charge of deciding who lives and who dies. Blackwood is horrified and says that’s not peace, it’s genocide, and asks why he would possibly go along with it. So Quinn tells him that if he doesn’t comply, it will mean extermination for humanity. Even now, a new full-scale invasion force is on its way and will arrive within five years. When they get here, they will wipe humanity from the face of the earth. Quinn’s plan is the only chance of survival for the human race.

Blackwood tries to reason with him, asks why they can’t find a way to co-exist, why the aliens think they have a right to the Earth. Quinn argues that his people can go where they please, that humanity doesn’t deserve Earth. Blackwood insists that humanity belongs here. “Belongs here?!” Quinn rages. “On this paradise that you treat like a toilet?!” He actually has a point. Reaching desperation, Blackwood argues that humanity’s saving grace is tolerance. Quinn scoffs, asking what good tolerance does. And Blackwood points out that humanity would accept Quinn, despite being alien, where Quinn’s people would not. Quinn is checkmated in the debate, but he rejects Blackwood’s reasoning anyway and drags him off to the U.N. to deliver his proposal.

When they arrive at the U.N., however, the aliens are there waiting for them. Quinn offers them Blackwood if they’ll let him go, but they refuse. Quinn tries to get away, but the aliens trap him and Blackwood in a closet. Realizing it’s over, Quinn is ready to give up, but Blackwood MacGyvers a blowtorch out of cleaning supplies and cooks the aliens as soon as they enter. More aliens show up and they flee back to Quinn’s secret lair only to find that a construction crew has blocked off the entrance. Quinn tells Blackwood to hide and plays possum. When the aliens get close, he uses a flash bulb to stun them, grabs one of their guns and shoots them. He tells Blackwood, “You gave me my life, now I give you yours.” He releases the bracelet and while Blackwood looks away, disappears. But his voice echoes through the tunnel, “Be seeing you, Harry…”

Normally, when my wife and I watch this show, we spend the entire time either laughing our asses off or staring slack-jawed at the ineptitude of the writing. Not this time. We sat quietly, in rapt attention, and when it was over, we looked at each other, stunned, and we both admitted that it was pretty darn good. There were a few wonky bits here and there, but on the whole, this was an hour of quality television. It was well-written, tightly paced, suspenseful, and even thought-provoking. It still might not have been my idea of what a War of the Worlds TV show is supposed to be, but judging it on its own merits, it was genuinely, really good.

Is this what the rest of the series is going to be like? Well, I’m not getting my hopes up. But if John Colicos gets as much screen time as he deserves – and this show desperately needs – then at the very least it might actually hold my attention. We’ll see…

So now it’s missing time. Blackwood and the team decide to interview people who have experienced missing time and appear to have had encounters with aliens. One of them happens to be super-hot, and Blackwood evidently thinks that makes it okay for him to massage her shoulders when she gets upset during her interview. Instead of finding this creepy, as any normal person would, she responds favorably. Because the writers of this show have no conception of personal space.

That night, Blackwood can’t stop thinking about her. But instead of taking care of it the way any normal person would, he decides to go full stalker and call her at 4am, saying he *has* to see her. Instead of asking if it can wait till morning, she agrees, and he meets her in what looks like a hotel lobby. He tells her he wants to hypnotize her. Any normal person would widen their eyes and say, “You got me out of bed at 4 in the morning for *this*?!” But she seems to think it’s cute. What the hell, writer?!

So Blackwook hypnotizes her and finds that she was assaulted by the aliens while jogging and they put something inside her. He also starts dating her, because for some inexplicable reason they’re just suddenly in love. Ugh!

Meanwhile, the aliens have commandeered an ambulance so they can randomly abduct people to do experiments on them. And also run red lights. Hey, can’t fault them there. That actually sounds like fun.

Blackwood is on his way to meet whats-her-name, but the aliens get there first and snatch her up. Blackwood arrives just as the ambulance is pulling away and the episode ends on a freeze-frame with a voice-over by Blackwood who says he knows in his heart that the aliens have taken her.

The episode didn’t end with the title, “To Be Continued,” but this sure felt like one. If it isn’t, it’s the most abrupt and unsatisfying conclusion to any episode so far. I guess I’ll reserve judgment on this episode till I’ve seen the next one. Either the story isn’t over and I’ll have more to say, or this is an utter botch-job of an episode. Stay tuned. Or not. Your call.