1. #1

    [TV] Earth: Final Conflict

    Back in the late 90s, I remember watching a few episodes (probably 3-4 episodes), and I knew I liked it.

    Fast forward, I spent over a decade of playing Blizzard games, and my watching TV got reduced. The past couple of years, I got hooked to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime to watch all those sci-fi and fantasy TV series I missed. Lot of catching up.

    A few months ago, I remembered these Taelon aliens from a series I liked, and once I remembered the title, I searched where I could watch it. Turns out it is not entirely free to watch.

    It is nowadays available via STEAM, and AMAZON PRIME.

    Personally, I think watching it via Amazon Prime is a better investment to watch all 5 Seasons, as you get also access to a larger library of TV series free for as long as you are a Prime member.

    Earth: Final Conflict Season 1 was kinda good and there was a main plot focusing on the secrets of the Taelon, but at the end of Season 1, the main character (William Boone) got killed. I think it was a big mistake to kill the main character in barely 1 season.

    Thereafter, they added a replacement to be the new main character: Liam Kincaid. This is the one I remembered from years ago. He is not exactly a great actor, but there was a good dynamic with him as the leader of the team.

    Season 2-4 were the best in the series with a series of plots intertwined and ramping up to a climax.

    However, this series got plagued with poor decisions. For example, Liam Kincaid is hybrid with two human DNAs and one alien DNA (Kimera race). He grew from a baby to a child, to a teen, and then to an adult in a matter of hours. He could shoot energy blasts from his hands. Pretty cool and different.

    However, each episode he would use that less and less, then eventually the producer/writers went with him becoming more human as he stayed on Earth. Then eventually, his Kimera DNA was burned from his blood becoming 100% human.

    This was in my opinion a huge mistake.

    Another thing that killed the series was the killing and complete disappearance of the resistance cells.

    The main plot of Liam being the savior of the Taelon, the Jaridians and humans kept ramping up through Season 4 until all races met at the volcano where they sorta fused into one.

    From that point forward the series sucked majorly starting with Season 5 episode 1.

    Liam is no longer main character. We really never knew what happened to Liam. Did he die? Did he become an Atavus? You never get to find out.

    Then William Boone gets resurrected which was super cool, but he only shows up in 2 episodes out of 22 (Season 5). At that point, I thought William Boone was staying as a regular again but my hopes died right away.

    The entire Season 5 is the female co-lead (Renee Palmer), and the female hacker (Street) fighting the Atavus alone, or with temporary help each episode. There was no longer a main plot that spanned the entire season or ramping up to a possible future season. It became a we have no filler plot, let's write this as an excuse to continue filming this season.

    Most of the temporary characters helping the female lead (Renee Palmer) would be killed at the end of the episode. Instead of saving people, as all heroes do, for a mess up or two these would get killed.

    In previous seasons, some of the guest characters would later return in another episode, and build momentum in the various overarching plots, but Season 5 kept killing guest characters and not building for the future -- except maybe a couple exceptions.

    The fact the Atavus were introduced instead of bringing the so-called Jaridian invasion, felt kinda cheating the loyal viewers who were expecting that to happen, and instead gave us the Atavus infestation.

    No signs that the Taelon would return as a species other than Ra'jel and Zo'or. We never get to see Da'an again which I think was the most appealing Taelon due to his closeness and defense of the human race.

    I really recommend Earth: Final Conflict from Season 1-4. Season 5 to me ruined the series and it was cancelled with episode 22 as the last of the series.

    Plotholes, and bad writing in Season 5, and writing off a large portion of the cast down to only 2 main characters killed the series imho.

    We never got to see Ronald Sandoval learning that Liam was his son.

    What could have saved the series would have been:

    1. Keeping William Boone as regular in Season 5.

    2. Or Sandoval getting to learn that Liam was in reality his son. I think that might have made him change his megalomaniac and selfish goals, knowing that he could still fight for someone. Family. We saw that Sandoval was not 100% evil when he lowered his guard the moment he found out that his wife was alive. If he had known that Liam was his son, he might have gone against the Atavus to save Liam from whatever energy state he was living on in the volcano's pool.

    Maybe Sandoval could have become the main character in Season 5 if they had gone that route, until he could have brought back Liam by Season 6.

    Plothole: at some point it was mentioned that all the babies Sandoval collected from pregnant mothers were all impregnated with his very own DNA. We never heard from his babies again. He didn't visit them, or hugged them or fought for them.

    Plothole: Lili Marquette gives birth to a half-jaridian baby and returned to planet Jaridia. We never hear much about the Jaridians until they returned in Season 4 Episode 22 to kamikaze against the Taelons. At some point, I recall someone mentioned that Lili died when Jaridia imploded. I was like.... what? I don't recall any episode where Jaridia imploded. Kinda an excuse to write off the Lili character and the entire Jaridian race.

    Plothole: There was an episode where a Terran space shuttle from the future landed 30 years in the past. A crew member is awakened from stasis, and before he dies he babbles about the Taelons being gone from Earth in the future, and a warning about a race the humans find. I am not sure if it was ever explained if that race was meant to be the Atavus, or if the plan at some point was to introduce a new alien race found in space.

    Plothole: In Season 5, a female Atavus is using Taelon-like portals that port you across time. She lands in what looked like spanish inquisition times and 3 million years in the past before an asteroid shower forced the Atavus to hibernate. These portals in time could have been used to go back in time to meet Ma'el to warn him and to learn from him what he intended for the Taelon, Humans, and the Jaridian. Maybe the portal could have been used as well to eventually save Mael and/or Liam in order to revert the timeline where the Atavus dominated Earth.

    I think that would have been a better plot to keep the series alive a few seasons forward.
    Last edited by Medievaldragon; 2018-03-13 at 10:00 PM.

  2. #2
    I lost interest after season 1. The tone and plot changed almost completely, and the new main character was just a pile of stale cheese.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Netherspark View Post
    I lost interest after season 1. The tone and plot changed almost completely, and the new main character was just a pile of stale cheese.
    First season with William Boone was kinda OK. He had a CVI implant and that allowed him to have photographic memory, able to go back and recall details of the investigation cases. But once Liam Kincaid replaced William Boone, they departed from this by not implanting a CVI to him -- which made solving cases difficult, and instead relied heavily on the goofy hacker, Augur.

    On the other hand, the Ma'el plot served as the main drive to the show through season 2-4. The series had its good plots, but it was flawed in other areas. I'll miss the series, but Season 5 was the worst, nigh cringe-in-disgust, season.

  4. #4
    I liked Boone as the lead and when he was replaced I was disappointed with the new main character and I stopped watching a few episodes into season 2. I remember watching some later episodes on TV and the plot and characters were too far removed from what I remembered to be able to follow it. I think I heard that Boone's actor left because he wanted to act in movies or something. I'm surprised the show lasted five seasons, it must have been cheap to make.

  5. #5
    Scarab Lord Frontenac's Avatar
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    I really liked this show until Lili Marquette left the resistance. I began losing interest after that. Renée Palmer was a good character, but she never had the same chemistry Lili and Liam had. Then I never got to see the last season on TV. Was it because I lost all interest, or was it because it stopped airing in my area? Maybe both.
    "Je vous répondrai par la bouche de mes canons!"

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