When God seemed to appear to the Alphans, I rolled my eyes.  Here we go, I thought.  But to my surprise, this episode offered me a lot to think about.  As I say often enough, that’s what good science fiction should do.

Strangely this episode takes place 55 days before the last one: it’s day 1095.  I can’t help but wonder why they bothered constricting themselves like this, because it takes a lot of jeopardy away for the characters.  If, for instance, Maya is there on day 1150, chances are she survives through day 1095.  Call me strange…  Anyway, their sensors pick up some alarming readings before a Jesus-looking dude shows up and claims… “I am your creator!”  His powers seem to lend credence to this too.  But he makes a comment that was very thought provoking.  He refers to those “highly imaginative works of fiction that you call religion.”  And at that moment I thought: this is something special.

Special or not, Koenig must be ancient English for pigheaded.  When Magus, the godlike being, arrives and says he’ll take some crew to the nearby planet, basically a new Eden, he selects Koenig, Helena, Maya and Tony – effectively the same crew that goes on all of the away missions.  Captain Hard Head says angrily that he’ll choose who goes.  (I actually blame Koenig for being so pigheaded that when Magus teleports John’s gun out of his hand, there’s a terrible camera cut that shows it still in John’s hand, even after Magus has it in his own!  Sure, you could blame the production team, but I know the truth!)

To increase the interest, Magus says he’s going to start a new Eden but with John paired with Maya (lucky bastard) and Tony paired with Helena (poor bastard).  Now of course, this isn’t going to go over well with Lord Belligerence.  He’s not up for creating a new human species with Maya.  Maybe that’s because it wouldn’t be a human species, what with her being another race and all that.  Still, Magus is capable of many things and soft blur on the camera is one of those skills, so before long John is kissing Maya (lucky bastard) and Tony is kissing Helena (poor bastard).  Meanwhile Alan is trying to take off from the Moon Base to find the away team and Magus is in a corner praying vehemently.  And then we get the technical side of it: Magus uses some form of solar power and Koenig figures it out.  The way the Alphans describe what they think powers him is a surprising reminder of how far we’ve come with our real life technology – the idea of solar power is unheard of, but since Magus is an alien, they figure he can harness it.  So they build a pit and … let’s just say I have a sick sense of humor passed on to me from my dear mom.  When Magus steps on the covered pit and falls through, it’s so sudden and fluid that I cried with laughter. Then, without sunlight to power this godly being, the planet starts to break apart.  Koenig and company run to the Eagle and take off.  The episode wraps with them flying away.

I’ve been interested in the idea of Ancient Aliens all my life.  I’d go so far as to say that I could accept it if it were finally proven.  I don’t know that I believe it, but I would accept if scientists said it was real.  I’m not a skeptic.  Finding an episode of Space: 1999 that tackles the subject was an enjoyable experience.  In the process we get a pretty fun alien fight between mutants (that speak perfect English), ape men and Maya as a reptile of sorts.  Magus also claims to have been Nostradamus, one of the three wise men and even Merlin.  While I can accept ancient aliens building things like the pyramids, I can’t accept that all the visionary humans of our history were really aliens.  That takes ALL value from humanity.  If we could also blame some of the bad things on aliens masquerading as humans, I might accept it.  Perhaps if they said Magus was both Leonardo and the writer who came up with Koenig’s personality, I’d believe it.  But just the good ones…?  Nah!  ML