"The Aftertime"
Air Date: October 1, 1999

Well, finally Cade's making with the smoochies! Oops sorry -- lapse of focus.

Using the can-we-retire-it-now plot device of a wormhole, The Aftertime broke new ground for the show by proposing what a future Earth would be like sans Cade Foster (Sebastian Spence) and crawling with Gua.

Foster's in Cleveland to find a disk of downloaded transmissions that the Gua are willing to kill for when the aforementioned wormhole deposits the world-weary, battle-ready future femme Lizbeth (Kathrin Nicholson) at Cade's feet in time to save his life.

He's sure it's a Gua trick until she proves otherwise by exhibiting knowledge of the prophecies and quatrains the Gua can't possibly have access to. So she wins him over and off they go to kill time and retrieve the disk before she's supposed to bring him back to the future to lead the resistance. Of course, as hard core genre fans we know Cade's gonna put the kibosh on that.

This eppy worked for me because it gave Foster a chance to relate to a victim of something he's spent 20 episodes trying to prevent -- total world domination of the aliens. And it presented him with a tantilizing Sophie's choice of whether to stay here and fight the First Wave or go with Lizbeth to fight the Third.

It also explored another shade of our hero's ever-perplexing alliance with Joshua. The big question for me was: to what purpose is the Acolyte going to use this disk that he deemed important enough to pawn Cade for? Is he going to hunt the Gua himself and if so why not divvy up stakes for the both of them and get it done faster? And if he's not going to hunt them, then what was all the cat and mouse about?

Lizbeth was a nice touch because she wasn't necessarily the chick-in-jeopardy that they usually throw at Foster. She was a strong, resilient, battle-tested woman who, in a move reminiscent of The Terminator's Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), comes across time to retrieve Cade as much for herself as for her race. It left me wondering what the world she would return to was like. Afer all, she had effectively changed her own timeline by saving the life of a man whose death had left the world almost without hope. Were the Gua as dominant as when she left? And is she going to be any more at home in that now-new world than she would have been had she just stayed in this one?

I wouldn't mind it terribly if they find a way to bring her back across again -- to keep Cade on his toes. She reaffirms that what he's doing does in fact matter.

And points to Rob LaBelle for being pitch perfect in his sweet scenes with Lizbeth as a toned down, slightly smitten Crazy Eddie showing her how to be feminine. His actions showed the importance of shared humanity in the face of global war.

And as for that smoochie -- it was the first time I was okay with Cade lip-locking someone who wasn't Hannah. Kudos all around.

First Wave can be seen Fridays on The Sci Fi Channel at 10pm and 2am EST

-- Heather McLatchie

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