This episode appears to be two stories fused into one. The one of Maya feverishly delirious and turning into awful rubbish alien monsters and going on the rampage in Alpha was probably not deemed sufficient to justify a whole episode of it's own, so it seems to have been used to pad out the more interesting story of John Koenig going out to investigate an abandoned ship only to find its sits on the edge of a spacewarp. The warp propels alpha 5 light years away and the clock is ticking for Koenig to find a way to catch up with Alpha before it's too late.
As you can imagine, the Koenig centred side of the story is far more interesting than the Maya one, yet the two have been cut together and vaguely linked to flesh out the story. Some awful alien costumes are on screen here, including the pink plastic mask worn by the one in the video message Koenig find on the derelict spaceship (you can even see the actors nose and mouth moving through the mask). In this sense this comes across as like a particularly bad Dr Who episode.
The Aliens yet again conveniently speak English in their message, the instructions they leave to Koenig and his co-pilot are also conveniently understandable despite them being an advanced race, Koenig is able to find their ships log also convenient, oh and the derelict ship also conveniently has a docking bay that just happens to be perfect for the Eagle to dock alongside. Is there a universal docking bay standard in operation between life forms who have never met? Yes, it's all incredibly convenient isn't it.
To me this episode seems to have been based on two underdeveloped ideas, one good one not so good, that were thrown together to make an episode. It's great that Carter makes an appearance and that we see a previously unknown 'refuelling Eagle' at work as well. However the silliness and childishness of Fred Freiburger's tenure as the producer of the second series was now starting to become obvious by this point and the series never quite truly recovered from this point on and it descended into a bizarre, slightly cheesy show with terrible costumes and storylines. At least when Buck Rogers in the 25th Century came around 3 or 4 years later and also eventually took that route it did it with tongue very firmly in cheek.
As you can imagine, the Koenig centred side of the story is far more interesting than the Maya one, yet the two have been cut together and vaguely linked to flesh out the story. Some awful alien costumes are on screen here, including the pink plastic mask worn by the one in the video message Koenig find on the derelict spaceship (you can even see the actors nose and mouth moving through the mask). In this sense this comes across as like a particularly bad Dr Who episode.
The Aliens yet again conveniently speak English in their message, the instructions they leave to Koenig and his co-pilot are also conveniently understandable despite them being an advanced race, Koenig is able to find their ships log also convenient, oh and the derelict ship also conveniently has a docking bay that just happens to be perfect for the Eagle to dock alongside. Is there a universal docking bay standard in operation between life forms who have never met? Yes, it's all incredibly convenient isn't it.
To me this episode seems to have been based on two underdeveloped ideas, one good one not so good, that were thrown together to make an episode. It's great that Carter makes an appearance and that we see a previously unknown 'refuelling Eagle' at work as well. However the silliness and childishness of Fred Freiburger's tenure as the producer of the second series was now starting to become obvious by this point and the series never quite truly recovered from this point on and it descended into a bizarre, slightly cheesy show with terrible costumes and storylines. At least when Buck Rogers in the 25th Century came around 3 or 4 years later and also eventually took that route it did it with tongue very firmly in cheek.
