Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict - Season One - Region 1 DVD

Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict, based on notes and story ideas the late Roddenberry left behind, turns a similar premise into a complex, nuanced tale of tensions between a race of bald, androgynous aliens who serve mankind and skeptical humans who don't trust them. Co-developed and co-produced by Roddenberry's widow, actress Majel Barrett (Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation), Earth: Final Conflict finds our planet more than happy to submit to the goodwill of super-evolved extraterrestrials called Taelons. Having eliminated much of our species' miseries with advanced technology, the Taelons begin moving more and more into the business of running human affairs. Kevin Kilner stars as William Boone, a cop who becomes an inter-dimensional double agent when a Taelon ambassador, Da'an (Leni Parker), chooses him to be a security liaison. Reluctant to accept the job, Boone agrees only after an underground resistance group--funded by a billionaire (David Hemblen) and including another top security figure (Lisa Howard)--convinces him to be their spy. Equipped with a brain implant that expands his mental powers, Boone begins working for both sides, trying to discover the full story behind the Taelons' altruistic relationship with Earth. Indeed, there is more to the Taelons' story than meets the eye, though they are not unsympathetic, and Boone develops something of a relationship with Da'an. The series has a kind of zig-zagging episodic structure that emphasizes unique stories while allowing the deeper, Taelons-versus-rebels tale to thread its way through. Special effects, as in Star Trek: The Next Generation, are on the cheesy side, but that's all right: several good performances compensate for that shortcoming. Parker, as Da'an, is very good as a creature of both duplicity and deep feeling. But the real standout is Von Flores as Ronald Sandoval, another security agent who destroyed his personal life to become a guardian for the Taelons. Flores is wonderful playing a man whose pain reveals itself, in small degrees, through a veneer of harsh authority. As it turns out, Sandoval is the only character who remained on Earth: Final Conflict all the way through its five seasons on television. Flores is the man to watch. --Tom Keogh "