First Wave
"Tomorrow"

Airdate: September 17, 2000

One again Cade is captured by the Gua. The Acolyte-Formerly-Known-As-Joshua, aka Caine (Roger Cross) and a skanky alien scientist chick mess with his mind in order to try and get our hero to spill his guts as to the whereabouts of the book of lost Nostradamus quatrains. In the brain games they play with him, Foster thinks that he's been transported to the future, where the Gua have won and he is their biggest Uncle Tom.

Fighters for truth, justice and the human way.

The future, as painted by Caine, bears a striking similarity to pre-WWII Nazi Germany with humans being branded, used as slaves, constantly bombarded with propaganda and murdered indiscriminately. The sight of an enormous Gua flag flapping obscenely in the wind over Washington, D.C. is proof positive that Foster isn't in Kansas anymore. After tailing Joshua -- that is, The-Acolyte-Still-Known-As-Joshua, who now exists only in this faux-future -- Cade convinces the alien's personal mistress, a human -- and double of Caine's skanky scientist chick friend -- that all that she's been taught is wrong and that contrary to what the Guanet says, he has no love for the Gua.

With her help, he tracks down Eddie -- who has returned to his real name of Larry Pisinski -- and they plan on starting the rebellion all over again. Only in the real world, Caine is impatient and makes scientist-ho pump up the juice. A couple of blips in the imaginary future later and Cade is spilling his guts.

Before Caine can send Foster off for dissection and study, a virus enters the system being used to brain-fry the human and the lights begin to flicker. Between one flash and the next, Cade is gone. Luckily, our heroes were infused with some common sense this episode and before Cade went to meet with Joshua, Eddie not only had his buddy wired, but moved the book of lost Nostradamus quatrains as well.

Much of the ground that "Tomorrow" covers has been examined in previous episodes. The audience has already been told what a Gua-controlled future would be like. Cade's weakness for pretty women has been explored before. And Foster has even been captured and mind-fucked by the Gua earlier. About the only thing new was that cool visual of a Gua flag flapping in the wind so from a strictly story-based point of view, "Tomorrow" was entirely derivative.

The only thing that saves "Tomorrow" from being a total failure is the cast dynamic. Only the usual good isn't good, and the usual bad isn't bad.

Does that make any sense?

Normally episodes, or at least scenes, that feature Roger Cross are always a cut above the rest, but ever since Joshua was been sucked down the rabbit hole and Caine took his place, all he does is breathe heavily and chew the scenery like a stereotypical villain in a bad melodrama. If he had a mustache I'm sure he'd twirl it menacingly at the close of every scene.

It's enough to make a girl wish for Tracy Lords to make an appearance. She couldn't be any worse, right?

As Cross' star dims, however, Sebastian Spence, and especially Rob LaBelle, have finally begun to really shine. By having Crazy Eddie become more personally involved in some of Cade's adventures, both the friendship between the characters and the quality of the stories have improved. By allowing Spence to interact with La Belle more often he seems to have grown more comfortable in the lead role. And by giving Eddie more screen time and activity, the episodes have begun to feel more connected, rather than having strictly a quatrain-of-the-week structure.

While the loss of Roger Cross as a factor in the plus column is a shame, thankfully Spence and LaBelle seem to filling the void he left.

-- Linda M. Najera

First Wave airs at 7pm EST, Sundays on The Sci Fi Channel.

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