"The Undesirables"
Air Date: August 20, 1999

Maybe I didn't much care for this episode because I was less than thrilled by the lovers who are at the center of this story. In my opinion the human theoretical physicist James Dutton (Robert Wisden - aka Pusher from The X-Files) and gua empiricist Anita (Joely Collins) are no star-crossed, human/gua Romeo and Juliet, they are selfish individuals who refuse to look beyond their own situation and shoulder the responsibility that their love and their knowledge gives them.

The story begins with Cade (Sebastian Spence) and Eddie (Rob LaBelle) bury the Nostradamus book deep in the woods and on a whim Foster, normally the brawn of the outfit, tries his hand at interpreting a quatrain with impressive results. This leads them to Dutton who has theorized that not only do wormholes exist, but they can be controlled and used to travel quickly through space. Obviously this is not the kind of information that the gua want known to the general public, especially since that is how they traveled to Earth in the first place. And so they sent an empiricist, Anita, to act as his assistant and spy on him.

An unforeseen event occurs, Anita, wearing a human form and vulnerable to human weaknesses, falls prey to the greatest weakness of all. She finds herself in love with Dutton and because of that love, betrays her people. After confessing her deception and telling him about the gua's plan for mankind, she then goes back and lies to her superiors about his progress in the study of wormholes. She has thrown in with the humans. Fully and irrevocably.

The gua do not take this lying down and send their best Acolyte, Joshua (Roger Cross), to eliminate Anita, to make her a lesson to all of those who would follow in her footsteps. Only Joshua is tired of killing his own, and as seen in earlier episodes, sympathizes with the humans' plight. But he must continue on as normal lest he become the prey rather than the hunter. When he does finally find the couple's last residence, they are not there. That's not to say the place is empty. Cade Foster, his arch nemesis and perhaps the one human he respects above all others, is also searching for Dutton and Anita. They part on tension filled terms, once again underlining Joshua's divided loyalties. Only now it's a showdown to see who will find the couple first.

Foster finds them first, of course, but here begins the part that pretty much ruins the rest of the episode for me. Cade expresses the thought that they are being selfish by running away, that their responsibility to mankind dictates that they turn themselves in and prove to the government that steps must be taken to head off the alien threat. The foolishness is that he's painted as being in the wrong or at least unreasonable. It seem as if it's revenge that spurs him on, but in truth it's simple common sense. With love comes responsibility. Dutton does not seem to know this and so does not teach it to Anita, to whom this emotion is brand new. One would hope that when Anita has had more time to reflect on her love for Dutton and realized that with that love comes the need to protect him, that she will return and help mankind defeat her own people, the gua.

There's a confrontation with Joshua and his backup, another Acolyte who has no sympathy for the humans, a daring escape (that wasn't all that surprising), and another confrontation between Cade and Joshua. Nothing is resolved of course, but perhaps lines that were not so clearly drawn before are finally starting to come into focus.

-- Linda M. Najera

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