The Gua agent Joshua is assigned to hunt down another Gua who's fallen in love with a human physicist in this first-season episode.
(First aired in the U.S. on August 20, 1999)
Written by Daniel Howard Cerone
Directed by Rene Banniere
GUEST STARS
Joely Collins -- Anita
Robert Wisden -- James Dutton
Jill Teed -- Talia
Edgar Davis Jr. -- Cole
Steve Bacic -- Gua Agent
Joely Collins is indeed pop singer Phil Collins' daughter.
WHAT HAPPENED
The alien enforcer
Joshua kicks open the door of a crackhouse, walking upstairs past addicts to find a Gua named Calvin. Calvin tries to run, but Joshua wounds him with gunfire and then corners him.
Calvin tearfully confesses his addiction to salt, which affects the Gua the same way heroin affects humans. He tells Joshua, "I can't take it here. I just want to go home."
Joshua is not sympathetic. He shoots Calvin, who collapses and dissolves. (more
spoilers)
ANALYSIS
The Gua really have two enemies:
Cade Foster and themselves. It's a toss-up which enemy does the most damage to them.
Like all good pulp villains, they make a habit of leaving important clues lying around and gloating at precisely the wrong moment. But what really trips them up is their own close encounters with human failings.
Sex, drugs and sodium chloride
Kinky sex, religious fervor, high-sodium diets -- you name it and there's a Gua or ten who's into it. The swank lifestyles and affected martini-drinking at the Gua headquarters also suggest that the virtuous Joshua is more the exception than the rule among his kind.
The Gua bear more than a passing resemblance to the Kelvans from the original Star Trek episode "By Any Other Name". Both sets of invaders took human form to further their aims, and both proved vulnerable to the human appetites that come with the body.
Where Star Trek had good-natured fun with the concept, though -- especially with Scotty's hysterically funny drinking bout against one of the Kelvans -- First Wave looks at the Gua's human failings with a more puritanical eye.
When bad things happen to bad people
Despite a formula that relies on one or more scantily-clad young women in almost every episode, sex is generally a bad thing in First Wave.
Gua who have sex -- Michelle from "
Cul-de-Sac", or Senator Preston from "Deep Throat" -- die like flies. Even the ones who just express interest in it -- like Lucas from "Target 117" -- tend not to last out the hour.
Other vices tend to be punished as well. There's an odd guilt-trip psychology to the Gua -- they live in rigid order, and when they step outside that order for the pleasures of the flesh they get soundly and fatally punished.
Sexy human characters -- Molly Simon from "
Susperience" comes to mind -- don't usually get killed, but they rarely get what they want. Instead, they are usually taught to relate to others in a more positive way and redeemed at the end of the episode.
Anita's survival simply underlines the point. This Gua agent can wriggle around under a sheet with the best of them, but love redeems her, turning her into a good girl and ensuring her survival.
The moral seems pretty clear: alien invaders who fall in love and have sex live happily ever after. Alien invaders who have sex without love die.
There's nothing wrong with a bit of morality in SF television -- something's got to make up for
Lexx, after all. But who would have thought a show as doggedly sexy as First Wave would be so traditional?
WHAT WE LEARN
Alcohol has no effect on the Gua -- but they still like martinis.
The Gua are concerned about the corruption of their agents by Earth life, and believe the weaknesses of their human bodies are the cause of their failings.
Calvin was the third Gua that Joshua had executed in the previous six months. The other two were Congressman Braxton ("Book of Shadows") and the evangelist preacher Elton ("Speaking in Tongues").
TUNE IN NEXT WEEK
Cade gets trapped in a basement in another first season rerun. But is he hiding from the "Second Wave" or irate fans of the Twilight Zone?
What do you think? Send comments to the
author or editor.
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