Earth: Final Conflict: Art of War

Howlyn attempts to find a way to beat the humans, with a little help from Sandoval's mind and the now-active anti-Atavus force acquire the corpse of the recently-deceased Juda thanks to Tate and attempt to work out what happened to her.

This episode starts off very well, with the Resistance kicking in against the Atavus and an almighty gun battle between them and Sandoval's troops. Of course, this is too good to be true, as is quickly proved when the story turns into a clip show. Now, I have a loathing of clip shows at the best of times, but why this one right now? This should be the point where the last season is moving towards an exciting conclusion, but instead it decides to indulge in a greatest hits, with Sandoval forced to run through some of the Taelons' greatest failures for Howlyn to learn from. Now, as per usual it's not clear how Sandoval can remember events he wasn't even at, but this flashback serves two functions: firstly it reminds we viewers how good both Boone and Liam used to be, but it also reminds that quite a lot of the older episodes were decidedly naff as well. Maybe the writers are trying to make a point?

Leaving the clips aside, I don't understand what's going on here. After hiring five leads only for this year, after 14 episodes, of which she's appeared in about five, Juda is killed off. Why? It's not like anything much has been done with her since she arrived so surely one plotline wouldn't be too much to ask. On top of that, Sandoval claims he loved her. Well, okay, Von Flores has been playing his character as if that's true all season, but as there's been no physical evidence to back it up, the pain he should be feeling falls horribly flat.

Tate is also reintroduced into the action only to be forgotten after bringing Juda's corpse to the Resistance. Do they still have him? Did they let him go? Does anyone even care? Oh, and before I forget, who was the idiot who cast Dean McDermott in this episode and then forgot that he'd already played the real Liam Kincaid back in season two? It would have been a great idea to have him meet Renee again and bring back her memories of 'our' Liam, but not a single person seems to have noticed. It wouldn't be so bad if it was only a minor character, but one who played such a significant role before was obviously going to be spotted and I can't believe that no-one in the cast or crew thought to mention the problem.

We can only hope that things will finally start happening now; we're down to only four leads, Sandoval might get something to do now he's been sent to Earth, and the Atavus will have to start fighting. Because if there are another six episodes coming where Renee wanders about trying to destroy Atavus hybrid chambers, I really don't want to know. This show has insulted my intelligence once too often this season.

**

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