episode #59 - The Galaxy Gift

episode #59 / Air Date 4/26/10 (episode #30 of 2nd season)
written by Barney Slater; Directed by Ezra Stone
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A hideous looking alien shows up (re-used from The Golden Man episode) but soon changes himself into a bald John Carradine - hey, it was the best he could do. Penny takes pity on him (Penny does that a lot), especially when it's found out that a trio of sinister-looking aliens are after him (these aliens are re-utilized from the episode Wreck of the Robot - I guess the show's makers were either running out of alien ideas or out of funds for new ones). The bad aliens, the Saticons, are dressed in black, move in sinister fashion, speak in a raspy voice and epitomize the creepy gangsters from outer space motif.
Smith, for the umpteenth time, is looking for an angle to get back to Earth; the Saticons create a duplicate of one of Earth's Chinatown locales (from San Francisco) on an asteroid to trick Smith into thinking he's back on Earth. It turns out that much of this is a test conducted by Carradine's alien character in his quest to find a truly unselfish being. He gave Penny a special belt & amulet for her to safekeep; he expects her to give it up like all previous selfish persons he had tested. A lot of this becomes pointless as the villains of the piece simply seem to be subordinate to Carradine's machinations. BoG's Score: 5 out of 10
Epilogue Tag: this is a preview of the 1st episode of the 3rd season, Condemned of Space, in which it looks like the Robinsons and the rest are back in outer space again.