Earth 2

Season 1 Episode 19

Survival of the Fittest

Aired Sunday 8:00 PM Apr 23, 1995 on NBC

Episode Fan Reviews (1)

out of 10
32 votes
  • The casulty of survival.

    This is my favorate episode of the series, it is one of the darkest I've ever seen, it's sort of a horror drama. This episode was inspired by the Sierra Mountains insident where settlers sometime in the 1800s were on an expediction to the west but then they got snowbound and unfortunately their rations were completely depleted, and so they resulted in canabalism killing some of the settlers for food till winter was over. This of course inspired the underrated horror film "Ravaged".

    I really love the format of the episode which is told non linar almost like the tv show "Lost" or "How I Met Your Mother". Like them the episode is a mystery, we know something has happened but were not sure what.

    I really loved the acting of all four characters, you felt pathos for all of them you really get that sense of their weiryness both physically and mentally as well as losing their sense of porportion as the sittuation gets worse. Even their fear has increased, there is one moment when Danzager sees a mirage of his daughter and at that moment he is afraid he may not have one more day to make it back to her. That is always a common fear every parient has, what will happen to their children when their gone if their not their to protect them.

    And of course when we find out how all four of them survived, it gave me a sad, sick, and shocked feeling inside. The whole episode has no answers but is more of a meditaion on the conficting dycodomous relationship between morality and laws of survival, civility and savagery. These were two themes that have ran thoughout the whole show and this epsoide I felt captured both of them perfectly.

    It's true it is wrong to kill another human being but what happens if you are placed in a certain situation of life and death and that other human being is trying to take your life, what would you do to preserve you own life. And it's also true that civilation and it's rules give us the means to live but when your away from it and your out in the wild the rules of civilization do not apply. Indeed as we see most the technology of all four characters are broken and all four don't know much survival skills, let alone enough means of survial. I even like their debate about wherether it was right to kill the Grendler or not. The Grendler is a strange kind of creature because even though it does possesss some human emotional traits they still possess and behave a bit animalistic which makes the issue all the more non answerable. But also ironically corilate with the dyconomous relationship. All four aren't proud of what they did but it's understandable. I really did love those moments of reconsiliation like with Danzager and his daughter. But my favorate moment of all and I thought it was when Danzager's character was at his emotional best, he was trying to negotiate but confess his sins and feelings at the time to the Grendler's mate that want revenge, trying to exchange his own life for his daughter that it's holding hostage, which I feel is what any good human being and father should do. The first casulty of survial is inocence.
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