Catacombs of the Moon
was never one of my favorite episodes. There are several
reasons for this, one of the main reasons has to be the
unpleasant characterization of Patrick Osgood. I
understand he was supposed to be under great stress, but
a little grace under pressure would have gone a long way
to make him more likable. When he says he would rather
blow himself up than hurt his wife, I couldn't help
thinking "Prove it!". Now that I think of it,
most of the characters were exceptionally irritable in
this episode. Koenig was no charmer for what little we
saw of him. Tony and Sandra were at each others throats.
Dr. Ben Vincent doesn't have a positive or kind word to
say in this episode. Helena was the coolest head of the
lot, and she was under the most pressure! Michelle Osgood
was also likable, but didn't seem to fit in on Alpha.
Assuming that the Alphans are made up of astronauts,
scientists, and professionals from all fields, her
shrinking "You're the man, so you must know
best." attitude seems wildly out of place. But I
have to say that she looked fantastic for someone who was
dying... never a hair out of place and her makeup was
flawless... even on the operating table!
This episode suffered even more from having a confusing
script. Had Patrick already predicted Alpha burning
before he hit his head? What was that firestorm? Was it
alive? Was it doing Patrick's bidding? If so, why? Trying
to make sense of it, I assume that the firestorm had to
be alive. Otherwise, how could a space phenomenon change
it's course, as this fire cloud does at the end of the
episode? Perhaps the firestorm had some sort of empathy
for Patrick, wanted to help him in some way, and not
knowing any better, lashed out with it's heat waves at
what it perceived to be Patrick's enemies (I am assuming
that Patrick in his frustration was angry at everyone and
everything around him). And what about his
"faith"? It is amazing to me that something
mentioned no less than nineteen times (I placed an
asterisk for each time the word faith is said next to
each sound file) would still be vague. He claimed to have
faith, but in what? He seemed to garner no comfort from
it. It didn't seem to give him a moral outlook. He had no
problem stealing explosives and threatening to kill
anyone who stood in his way. Apparently, with his
"faith", the end justifies the means. This
perspective mirrors that of Luke and Anna in Testament
of Arkadia, another
episode dealing with fanaticism masquerading as faith or
destiny. I can't tell
what statement they are trying to make about Patrick's
"faith". Is it supposed to be all part of his
connection to the firestorm? Did he ultimately cause the
heat wave? Is that how he was able to see Alpha burning
in flames before it happened? He and Michelle apparently
can communicate telepathically in one scene... courtesy
of the firestorm? He wakes her when she is supposed to be
heavily sedated... another firestorm intervention? But he
saw everyone on Alpha die if they didn't evacuate into
the catacombs, was that a "promise of things to
come" unfulfilled by the firestorm, because he
called it off when his wife was saved?
Like the film Contact, this
episode tried to pit faith against science, but it did
not succeed, as anything that could be attributed to
"faith" only made sense, in the context of the
story, if you attributed it to the firestorm entity.
Further, the firestorm entity seemed to be controlled by
Patrick on a subconscious level, like the Id creature from
Forbidden Planet. The only scene in which this theme of
"faith versus science" actually succeeds is
when Michelle has received her new heart transplant, and
is not recovering until her husband is found. I came away
from this, with the same thing I came away from Contact
with... neither faith nor science alone is the answer,
but a balance of both.
A minor nit, but why doesn't
the heart they construct look like the diagram they made
it from?
 
Since they are building the model and drawing the
schematic... why don't they match? Another minor nit, but
I thought the firestrom effect was really lame. It looked
like a bunch of back lit cottonballs on a spinning plate!
The beams towards Alpha are just as bad.
 
I think the best parts of this episode belong to Helena.
Her determination to save Michelle is so strong, but she
suffers quietly as each new heart fails without the
tiranium. And when she gets the last heart working, she
can't bare to think of Michelle dying in the catacombs
when she really has a chance for survival now. Barbara
Bain shines in this lack luster episode.
Replies to comments made
here are always welcome. You can contact me by using the
commlock in the Communication Centre.
|
