What Went Wrong With Earth 2 (Forgotten Television) 

I disagree with your negative comments. Earth2 was one of the best adventures I’ve watched. All the episodes were amazing.

I have a complete different opinion of the show - it was really a pearl and a pity they stopped it.

I disagree, I love science fiction that doesn't rely on magic tech or require huge special effects budgets. I think of it as more of a wagon train in space myself. But then again so was the original star trek series.

I disagree with you almost totally. Earth 2 was one of the TV sci fi greatest moments in TV, the entire thing isn't flawless but it's FANTASTIC. Best show ever for sci fi and for people who may not like sci fi.

The SFX of Earth2 was mindblowing for 1994 in movies, much less TV.

Your critic is unfair and just a list of spoilers. It is still one of my favorite tv show as it was different from space ship (Star Trek) or sea based shows (like SeaQuest). I loved the story arcs, the characters and the actors. It feels like LOST on an other planet. Riley was played by Locke from LOST. This show would have deserved more seasons.

You think Voyager was better? Whaaaaaat? Get out. The Grendlers were way more realistic than anything on Star Trek.

the series was great, just didnt get enough attention. I dont agree with you. I watched it when it first came out. dont you appreciate you shitting on a good show.

Earth 2 was a great show. Sure it wasn't perfect, but I loved it and I'd really have enjoyed quite a few more seasons. There are various examples of great shows that need a season or two to really get things dialled-in. So, I think if they'd made more of Earth 2 it would have gone for great to insanely great.

I always thought that LOST was a remake of this show, plane crash on an island instead of spaceship on a planet, the others as the aliens (who actually are natives) a crippled man walks while on earth a man becomes crippled, main character is a doctor, some actors are the same, and many other things...

I loved this show, not matter it wasn't perfect

Use to watch this right next to sea quest

I loved earth 2, each to their own.

I loved this show as a child and still do, it's such a shame how the episodes were shown in the wrong order, confusing everyone watching it the first time, I'm pretty sure they aired the episodes in the intended order in my country cause I can't remember being confused. This show was a little too ahead of it's time, I wish it was talked about more, I'd pay to see Earth 2 revived, something like 20+ years later one season arc, it would be so great to see Clancy Brown back as a likable, good guy on TV. God damn I hated the time travel episode.

Your impression of Earth2 is rather different from mine. Yale is not half robot. He has a few augmentations- IIRC the memory wipe was to make him a better person?

Earth 2 would be a success these days, back in the early/mid 90’s this was too ahead of it’s time. Shows like this didn’t gain much momentum until a decade latwr

I was able to watch it again recently and it's *much* better than I remember. I don't know how many seasons it had in it, but I was sad to see it go.

The whole Terrian connection is what captured my imagination...I really wanted them to take that further - could have been a whole Dune x Avatar arc. But you're right - they just went nowhere. With ANYTHING. They just kept starting story arcs only to let them wither on the vine. I wonder how they ever got this mess green-lighted.

My nostalgy for this show makes any disadvantages you mentioned a true merits. This show was aired when I was the very same age as True, and TV in the 90's here in Easter Europe had less shows to offer than today. After those 30 years I had rewatch it all I was hapy as kid, felt like i traveled back to the era before internet and smart-devices.

I think it suffered the same network scheduling issues that Seaquest did, broadcasting on Sunday nights and often getting preempted by sportsball. It'd be interesting to know for sure if Netflix put something like this out, if it might have done better. It's a very um unique show and the serial format was very new for sci-fi back then, but way common now. Sure the aliens were freaking weirdos but that's pretty common now too.

I’m rewatching the series (watched it when it originally aired). In my head, the Terrians reach out to Alonzo because he’s technically the oldest in the group (probably by far), so they assume that he’s the wisest among them. It’s implied through dialogue that he’s over 100.

earth2 and that Roy Schider dsrv show where my Sunday night jam

I agree with quite a bit of what you said. However, Voyager abandoned the supply and survival issue so quickly that it didn't matter and the whole reset button issue with that show really squandered what could have been a powerful and dramatic story.

Robot, cyborg, Cars, all the tech felt cool.

When i watched this back in the day as a little kid those aliens gave me nightmares.

I couldn't wait for the next episode when i was a kid.I had a crush on Antonio Sabato. 😆

1:52 you forgot Tim Curry played Gaal. Not a main charter , but a big actor. I loved this show

I actually liked the show. It wasn't my favorite, but I enjoyed the it.

Wow, it's so hard to find reviews of this show. So sad. I fell in love with it since it first aired. I'm so happy to own the dvd's.

I was eleven when this aired and I was *captivated*. I couldn't get enough of this show. I thought about it when it wasn't on, trying to solve the mysteries and imagining how I would survive in that world. I haven't seen it since then so I don't know if it holds up, but it unequivocally captured my young imagination when it was new.

I disagree with a lot of your critiques here - I actually think the pace was deliberate and got us to know the characters. The fact that the Terrians didn’t speak just showed how alien they were and I thought terrific - they kind of hit the Gaia hypothesis prior to it becoming mainstream. Agree it could have been better -I think ripe for a reboot.

Nightman, Sheena, Beastmaster, Dark Angel, mutant X, Cleopatra 2525, Jack of all trades, Warehouse 13, The Lone Gunmen, Highlander the series, Highlander: the raven, Earth: Final Conflict, Vanishing Son,

This is a show that a complete reboot could work if it were written really, really well and the story was revamped but honored the original one

I loved this show as a kid, need to find a clean copy to watch it again

i liked the show very much. It had huge potential. It was very grounded (apart from the terian stuff) and could have great story arcs in the second season. New colonists arrive, the show could completely change when they arrive at new pacifica.

I agree with almost everything you say here, yet..., I loved the series anyway and was sorry to see it go. I bought it on DVD and have been rewatching it. What I liked about this show, compared to Star Trek Voyager (and I loved that show...mostly) is that the characters seemed more real, closer to real life than the voyager characters did. Maybe it was the acting, I don’t know, or the script writing perhaps. The show also was more cinematic to me than Voyager was, which seemed to have more of a “filmed for video” quality than Earth 2 did. In the end I’d still take Voyager, but hey....what self respecting Star Trek fan wouldn’t? Lol. Enjoyed your review.

Thank you for giving me a little bit closure on a strange childhood memory about a weird scifi show that I could not forget, but found too boring to rewatch. Now I don't have to. Well such wasted potential. I do like the idea behind it very much.

Hard disagree with this review. I loved this show as a kid, and was sad when it was cancelled. And I really enjoyed it on rewatch a few years ago. This was ground breaking television at the time. Just look how incredibly beautiful the alien designs are! The puppetry and makeup work in this show is some of the best that ever made it to network television. And plot?? This came out in the 90s. Most shows at this time were syndicated and scifi shows especially were NOT serialized. Think about other scifi shows out at this time... TNG was episodic. And even DS9 was still episodic at this point. X Files was episodic. Babylon 5 was just about the only serialized show at the time. So having characters arcs and a plot progression *at all* was very different from most of the scifi shows on television. So I think they were trying to do short serials of 4 or 5 episodes and then on to the next story. Maybe that didn't work for everyone, and airing them out of order didnt help, but it was something different at the time.... and just gorgeous to watch. But, I also really enjoyed Stargate Universe... and think its the only Stargate TV show worth watching. It only got bad when they tried to wrap into the rest of the Stargate cast. And I also really enjoy the granddaddy of these kinds of shows: Space 1999! I actually think these kinds of shows are better when there ISNT a big dumb plot trying to make it all work. Just show up in a new place and deal with the new challenges and move on.

I miss this show. I wish someone revived this series in some way

Earth 2 was great show a new take on Earth future, Hey, how about review of Space1999 ? Seen it ? To different seasons.

I loved Clancy Brown in Highlander, so I was glad to see him in this show.

I was a kid when it came out, and I really liked this show... I just wish they did more with it.

This is NOT boring. Gosh.

Loved this show when I was a kid. Rewatching it I realise that Earth 2's indigenous humanoids are total knockoffs of the Tuskens and Jawas, but it's still an enjoyable show whose sets and costumes hold up really well.

love how the response to try to 'save' shows like these is to air episodes out of order. Lets reward what little audience we have by confusing and pissing them off.

This is a good review, the points made were well defended. It is however, still a good show worthy of viewing. The only issue I have is that the special effects have not aged well and the show would have benefitted from modern CGI.

Earth 2 may have made a good mini series

I loved that show, it did need more tho

On one hand, you put a lot of effort in order to produce this video as a criticism towards the show, for some reason. On the other hand, it appears that you dedicated yourself to it, dwelled deep into the story line and even watched it more than once, analyzing the show in details. I would like to believe the reason for that is partially the fact that there is something special to it after all. I first watched it around the time it aired, in the 90’s, as a teenager in Israel. Being a Star Trek fan back then, Earth2 took me to a different kind of Sci-Fi experience: though it is sci-fi, what it focuses on is actually humanity, moral dilemmas, survival of oneself and of the human kind,, relationships, family, love, conflicts, faith, inner and outer research, and questioning life as a whole. The scenery was spectacular; the filming and camera motion - marvelous; the soundtrack - touching; the acting - real and moving; the plot - intriguing and exciting. 
All the aspects that you interpreted as being superficial and not interesting - in my opinion were full of depth, innovation, interest and exciting drama. I have watched the show a few times ever since and it hasn’t lost its charm in 30 years. Still dreaming of being part of a group and a project like the “Eden Project”, as an archetype of doing something with a greater purpose. That is one of the things Earth2 thought me. I wish they’ve made more shows like it - dystopian, yet optimistic and motivating, that makes you reflect upon life and want to become better and do good.

I disagree with you.. SGU & Earth 2 was both great series. They were ahead of their time in airing.. Everyone hates them because it was not like the tv series of their time period.

A very good first episode,, unfortunately followed with a weak sometimes confusing storyline. However, you are extremely negative and do little to explain why many people enjoyed the series and were disappointed when it was killed off. So often loyal sci-fi viewers are treated like dirt, stepped on and brushed off, its like the entertainment industry doesn’t/t appreciate the value of developing genre viewer loyalty. There was a time when it was thought that expanded outlets for “television” shows would facilitate success for those with modest size audiences and productions that perhaps needed time to develop. Survival of the fittest? Maybe this show was just too weak, but I scratch my head to understand the competing blizzard of trash that does survive. But I don’t think “Firefly” was weak, I will never get over the loss of that show. Lots of good actors good stories, an excellent hybrid genre, you know a western/space mix. ‘Really miss that one.

Space: Above and Beyond? The Pretender? La Femme Nikita? Those were great.

A forgotten series for you. Space Above and Beyond

I loved it, couldn't get enough. But they did need a bigger buget

I need this back on Netflix And the pilot was amazing. I’ve made a Reddit for this show ❤ and my geek kicked in. Not half human half cyborg. Half human half robot is a cyborg

I feel personally attacked right now, this show is my favorite of all time. I was 7 years old when I first watched it, my tiny mind was blown. My family had just moved to another country and I had to explore my new surroundings like the characters of this show. The cinematography felt very 'clean', the story and the characters were complex, but even as a child I could understand the initial concept and the motivations of the characters. Like the movie AVATAR, this show was meant to be social & historical criticism. Human beings would do the same despicable things on this planet they did on Earth again and again ... to the point, their own home planet became hostile to life.

This is why you need a show bible that has your ending point already figured out and an idea of what the arch is.

Obscure great show: The ORIGINAL The Tomorrow People show british from 1970s

When I hear Earth 2, I think about the The Flash and the Arrowverse.

Loved the series and Tim curry was class

I heard they had brought in a new guy .. writer or producer, who changed the entire thing to a shallow (appeals strictly to men) type story. He was gonna kill off characters and replace others and he had the show so messed up that they just dropped it. I liked the show and was looking forward to season 2 that murder came. I thought there could have put it on hiatus for a year and fixed the problems. I honestly lived Danzinger and True... Both grew up tough to survive. I also heard Madison Wright, who played true developed heat issues and Clancy Brown, who played her dad on the series had a five raiser to pay for it... Sadly, she died in her early 20's on her honeymoon grub heat failure. It really hurt Brown. He'd become fond of her while during the season run

I miss your Power Rangers videos. Why COPPA, Why?

One thing you forgot to mention is that the actress that pay the girl, J. Madison Wright, died young at the age of 22 of a heart condition. Very tragic story.

I would have been about 12 when this show came out. Only got to watch a few episodes but I’m keen to watch again

The reason Adair got put into the chamber was because Deborah was pregnant at the time and they had no way to explain or hide it. So they basically were going to stuff her in a box offscreen until she was off maternity leave and able to come back, I never heard or saw anything pertaining to a s2 but I find it strange that they wanted to make John the villain. However on the standpoint of the fighting it makes sense, Adair was their leader and a very calm and level headed presence...well sometimes... so without her to balance Johns more aggressive and bullheaded approach to leadership it tracks that infighting was a likely outcome. Adair was pretty much the only person in the group who could and would put John back in his place, so him losing her influence would likely have resulted in a much more tense environment. I still watch this show from time to time and while I agree there were far too many plot holes and pacing was a huge issue I still enjoyed it and would have liked to have seen a happy ending outcome.

Yes it was an interesting sereis. The computer game ALPHA CENTAURI by Sid Meier reminded me a lot at that classic but you are right it was axt of to early.right after you got emotionally involved as a viewer. 5:28 Seems you are not happy with the concept of a sentient planet that gets in a symbiosis with the colonists living on it. THAT ONE also was a big topic in the Science Fiction literature of the Seventies when authors took up the basic ideas of the early ecological interested groups Those really had created a mix of Parascientifical, Mystical, Sochial-Cultura based philosophical construcct called GAYA which mixed in a lot of the FLOWER POWER IDEAS of the Hippy movement from the late Sixties ( here in Europe rather in the early Seventies My used background literature: - KINO DES UTOPISCHEN. GESCHICHTE UND MYTHOLOGIE DES SCIENCE FICTION FILMS, München, erste Auflage, 1978.- MEDIENLEXIKON DER UNTERHALTUNGSLITERATUR in zwei Bänden. - LEXIKON DER SCIENCE FICTION LITERATUR, 2. Auflage, München, 1987

Was one of the best, very best, series...

I enjoyed Earth 2 but have yet to finish seeing the whole series. Netflix got rid of it. 😒 And airing episodes out of order is never a good idea. The viewers are too smart to fall for that.

Never watched this show. But I did hear about it.Very cool. Good review.

Loved this show

Made better than a lot of shows today? If that's the case, then it's virtues far away it's faults.

Terra Nova was never given a true chance I freakin loved that show when it came out was so pissed when it was canceled.

I was going to college in Santa Fe in 1994 when they were shooting the show around the area, and at the sound stages on our college campus. I used to see one of the location sets driving up to the ski basin, and some of the actors around campus. Some of the sets they built on the stages were pretty big and impressive.

I dont really ever watch sci-fi but i watched this show with my dad when i was younger.

Did they ever make it to New Pacifica or did they all die of dysentery?

I liked this show and SGU. SGU was the only SG I watched actually.

The primary reason why the show failed is the exact same reason why The Monroes failed from waaaaaayyyyy back in the 60s. When a show is based on endlessly roaming and NEVER REACHING THE GOAL the show will inevitably fail.

A few years back I discovered a new DVD Box in my local library, it was this show. I had immediately tears in my eyes, that's how much I'm still obsessed with this show ... it planted the love for science fiction in me. The only aspect I hate is that multiple characters call the 'native' living beings ALIENS - no dummy, you are the aliens!!! This series has tons of historical references to atrocities committed by human beings, especially those in Australia and the American continents ... no wonder U.S. Americans didn't like watching this.

In Australia it was cancelled when they left the doctor behind. And never sore any episodes after that

"Stranded, limited supplies, desert environment, then driving from location to location, rinse and repeat." - Sounds a lot like "The Martian". Only that this film was exciting and entertaining.

I think this show did have an interesting premise, good characters, and awesome technology, it's just a shame that the characters never did much, and having said premise be surrounded by a wasteland with its local civilians that don't even speak, thus making an already boring show even more boring, add in a stupid finale that ended on a cliffhanger, along with the episodes being aired out of order later on, and you have a recipe for disaster. And the fact that the second season that was still in production at the time that was going to head in the complete opposite direction of the series instead trying to find a balance of both just goes to show how heavily rushed so many of these mid 1990's TV shows produced by Amblin Television on NBC were. I think I'll probably still give it a watch via streaming, or DVD someday. And as you've said at the end, at least they actually tried something new with this show as opposed to the abundance reboots, and remakes nowadays (which I personally don't have an issue with in general, they just need to tone them down, a lot). Another great lookback!

There was a time TV just didn't know what to do and did Dramas based on things that barely worked, hoping to find that quirky show like X-Files. I remember The Pretender, Profiler, Nowhere Man, The Invisible Man, John Doe, Cop Rock, My Secret Identity, Eerie, Indiana, Alien Nation, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., Kindred: The Embraced, Wonderfalls, the Human Target, Reaper, any show by David E. Kelly Okay, so that spans a couple of decades. maybe it was just me, then, and not TV that got odd.

Don’t shit on stargate universe! 😅 it was the one stargate show I enjoyed watching and the only one I wished had more seasons. 😛

I've been trying to remember what this show was for years. All I could remember was it was sci Fi and they thought someone died but he didn't

If you liked this as a child try Raised by Wolves. I totally forgot about this show until i watched that and remembered it.

I remember seeing trailers for this series on Australian television back in the day. They tried to hype it up as being from Steven Spielberg. But unfortunately they decided to publicise this was also from Michael Crichton, trying to emphasise it was from the same minds as ER and Jurassic Park. That is a lie just to hook viewers in, given that Crichton had no involvement with the series. And yet we were briefly hooked to this, because of the lie.

When I think of earth 2 I think of the world were power girl comes from. Speaking of which the birds of prey show would make a good episode.

I love this show. I grew up watching it and adored the characters and storylines. It had an amazing cast with so many fabulous acting talents. It was so unfair the way they left us hanging with no proper ending after everything the Eden Advance crew (and the audience!) had been through - a dreadful ending for an incredibly underrated show. Thankfully now that the series has been uploaded to RU-vid I can enjoy watching it as many times as I like. It’s a shame you can’t seem to appreciate the many fine aspects of this show. The 90s was truly a wonderful era as far as sci-fi TV series go and Earth 2 was definitely one of the best.

Star Trek Voyage was the best!!!! I missed the last episode cause I enlisted to the Army. But caught it years later on Netflix

So, NBC got a real "Wagon Train to the Stars" and ended up with nothing...again. I had hopes for "Earth 2" because of the characters and having a Western State That Wasn't California playing a semi-desert alien planet. I thought of the Terrians as American Indian analogs, which was interesting. Yep, the Adairs and the Danzigers were very different partial families, which were kept a arm's length.

I agree with the review, pretty much all of it. I really liked the first episode, but it deflated like a punctured tire across 20 or so episodes. It was like they thought of a great concept and initial treatment, but gave no thought to how it would work over a protracted time frame. The characters were generally well-written and performed, but each week I had diminishing hopes that the writers would be able to find an engaging story arc or two. Sadly, that never happened and it seemed almost that they were writing it on the fly, with odd truncated storylines and character arcs that went nowhere, typically the sign of a series that's struggling. from what the reviewer says, it appears likely that they came up with an engaging idea, fleshed it out a little, got it green-lit and then realized they'd painted themselves into a creative corner. Sad, because it had some potential.

Yeah, the first episode looks awesome, but they advertise the waste of Alonso a whole ton. Lets you know that they have no idea clue.

You’re just a kid and we’re not even born when this was in syndication. You can’t possibly understand what the show was or meant to be, since you weren’t even conceived during the time of airing .. it’s just ridiculous

It's real!!! I found it!! Thank you for reminding me of it.

This is one of the reasons I hated NBC. They seemed to follow the same model as FOX network. And to this day NBC and Fox have occasionally produced great sci fi shows but would produce these shows like they could care less about whether they would stay on the air or not often times they would start off great then the studio would lose interest and purposefully sabotage these shows and they were lucky if they survived one season. And it’s quite a list of shows that were done this way over the years on both networks.

This shoe was awesome seen 3 or 4 episodes. The shoe got forgotten in my party daze. Great memories of those episodes.

Earth 2 would have being great if they planned it in full first or did it all in one season.

I kinda like the show, but to save money, they filmed in a familiar area - it is not very believable for a second planet.

Earth 2 was like Crystal Pepsi, it was good and got cut too quick. But I don’t remember too much of it. I saw it on Netflix back in 2014 but still don’t remember it. I was able to find it on DVD from the library.

I dimly remember this show. As I remember, I thought it had some good points.(very few) did not see much of it(being in the Army I did not see a lot of TV in the 1990’s)