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Friday, December 27, 2013

Sandoval's Run



Up late watching old episodes of Earth: Final Conflict ... a Canadian science fiction television series .... Early in the 21st century, a race of aliens, the Taelons, arrive on Earth. In exchange for being allowed to take refuge on our planet, the Taelons offer the people of Earth access to their advanced technology. As a result, disease, war and pollution are nearly eliminated. Despite all these advances, there are some people who think the Taelons are not as benevolent as they seem. A resistance movement is organized.

In the storyline, some law enforcement agents become "companions" to the aliens and get surgical implants, CVIs, in their brains that make them totally devoted to the aliens' agenda. One such agent is the main character, Boone, whose implant was altered by the Resistance so he could remain autonomous and undercover in the alien camp. Tonight's episode, Sandoval's Run, was about another agentl, who upon implantation had his wife put in a mental institution so she wouldn't interfere with his loyalty to the aliens. When his CVI breaks down and he becomes again the man he was before working for the aliens, he tries to rescue his wife and get her someplace safe before he dies ... the lack of the implant is killing him. But he's captured and another CVI implanted, and though the Resistance does save his wife, he's told instead that she's been killed. A really sad episode :(

Here's a clip showing Sandoval seeing his wife in the institution after years of neglect, breaking her out and getting her to a safe place, and then trying to explain to her what had happened to him - why he had changed and done what he had done to her ....


2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for the post! I loved some of the episodes from the first season. This was the one that blew my mind: that the completely subservient and totally immoral Sandoval was a decent man before the CVI was implanted. Von Flores did a good job. As a matter of fact, all of the actors playing the "good guys" did a good job on portraying the conflicting emotions that arise when a vicious enemy is transformed into a good man.

SPOILERS BELOW:

It was sooo nice seeing Kevin being so bad. I also wonder: it would have been so easy for the "good guys" to put an adjusted CVI into Sandoval's head. Even if the writers wanted to keep Sandoval evil for a while, they certainly could have put in some kind of plot device in which the CVI would deactivate, allowing Von to be a replacement hero for any of the seasons in which the hero of the season wasn't doing a good job.

2:27 PM  
Blogger crystal said...

Thanks for the comment. Yeah, I really liked the first season - I haven't seen the other seasons in so long it's hard to remember them. Netflix doesn't have the later seasons, unfortunately.

11:08 PM  

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