Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B+ | 2 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT "You Fart Helium?"
By Couch Baron | Season 1 | Episode 1 | Aired on 03.18.1999
Crichton hurtles through the wave. It's cool-looking. Spinny-spinny CGI, Crichton yelling in pain. He's going to have a talk with NASA about their wuss-ass G-force simulators if he ever gets home. Finally, he comes to a stop. He tries to contact Canaveral, and asks if they got video of all that. Well, it may get there eventually, but it'll be eons into the future. NBC may even be out of its ratings slump by then. Anyway, Crichton soon realizes that both Canaveral and Earth aren't so much around, and what's more, he might want to avoid dying in the asteroid field in the middle of which he's suddenly found himself. I hope he had an Atari as a child. He hilariously is like, "Uh...Canaveral?" So much for the three-hour tour. Credits.
Which are awesome. They're even better than those of Veronica Mars!
When we return, Crichton's still floating in space, but he's close to a large asteroid, and there are other ships zipping about. I just hope Crichton has seen The Empire Strikes Back, so he knows not to land on the asteroid, as that's a good way to get eaten by a space slug. Anyway, one of the ships zips up behind Crichton and clips one of his tail fins, or whatever they're called. The offending ship careens off and explodes, and that's why you never get behind the wheel if you've had more than one glass of Romulan ale. Crichton, for his part, seems okay, until he comes across a behemoth of a ship. He breathes, "That's big," and I'll leave it to you to imagine where and when he might have said those words before. The little zippy ships are shooting at the great big ship, which looks kind of like an enormous wishbone, at least from this angle. Crichton realizes that he's being pulled into the belly of the ship, and tries to call Canaveral for help, like, stop living in the past, Crichton. He rather gently gets towed into the hangar amid what my closed-captioning describes as "hydraulic whirring." Eventually, he comes to a stop, but before he really has time to catch his breath, a pair of antennae peer in at him. Okay, they're not antennae -- they're plastic attachments with lights on the end that are meant to look like visual antennae. But given that they're attached to a sort of souped-up Roomba, it seems silly to go into detail describing them. The Roomba makes R2-D2 noises at Crichton, and then something explodes on one of his consoles and a fire breaks out. Crichton pops the hatch and exits his craft as he extinguishes the fire. He looks around, hearing all sorts of noises, and then sees the Roomba come out of hiding, one of its antennae damaged. It runs away. Crichton looks at his ship, and then suddenly a different Roomba, if the undamaged antennae are any indication, pops up and start beeping at him and pointing mechanical arms threateningly. Crichton just stares dumbly until the Roomba zaps him with something. Wow, when that dude later says that Crichton is retarded, he'll do so without even having seen this little performance.