The Sci-Fi Channel's first drama series is called "Mission Genesis," but a more apt title would've been "Melrose Space" or "The Real Whirl." When the first of the show's 13 half-hour episodes premieres tonight at 7:30, we meet the self-described "six complete strangers with blank memories on a crippled ship" as they come out of a cryogenic sleep.
Within seconds, Yuna (Nicole deBoer) is in the shower washing green goo off her body, the camera panning her bare legs and back.
Wearing skin-hugging T-shirts and pouty faces, the cutely named Gen-X crew look like products of a menage a trois between Billy Idol, downtown Julie Brown and Mr. Spock.
It turns out they're 500-year-old clones, and their 27th century mission is to repopulate Earth. It seems all life has been wiped out by a universal virus.
Scientists were smart enough to launch them into space as the plague spread through the galaxy, but they don't appear to have been blessed with their forefathers' cranial genes. Their makers also forgot to update their new-wave hairdos, though they do appear to have the ability to make whoopee.
"Too bad you weren't in my life an hour ago," Yuna tells Bren (Jason Cadieux, who looks like a cross between Peter Gallagher and Pudge Rodriguez) when he promises he knows how to "lock on and fire" -- the spaceship's weapons, that is.
Later, when Bren, the crew's macho bad boy, pounds on a door that won't open, Gret (Kelli Taylor) offers: "Hmmm, testosterone fit. How civilized."
In the first episode, "Awakening," the characters fight off an alien attack even as they try to figure out who they are and why they're aboard a spaceship. Because of the attack, they woke up prematurely, with incomplete memories.
So in episode two, "Lullaby," the onboard humanoid computer, Gen (Julie Khaner) tries to get them to go back to sleep. But they rebel, persuade her otherwise and get the 411 on their mission.
Though we learn that Yuna is a pilot, Reb (Gordon Michael Woolvett) an engineer, Lise (Sara Sahr) a doctor and Zak (Craig Kirkwood) a computer specialist, their stilted speech and juvenile concerns make the roles hard to believe.
In short, Mission Genesis is a silly little show. The sets are generic, and the special effects are just a notch above "The Brave Little Toaster."
