I thought this was a decent start for the series. It didn't knock me over or anything, but I thought it was a well done hour of entertainment with a less than subtle jab at current events.

Looking forward to next week. Looks very promising.

Waterston and Davis were very good although I could kinda see what was coming before it did.

OK episode, but I was hoping they would've started with a stronger one.

How much did it tank in the ratings?

Watched it for Davis and Waterston. I thought it was mediocre, definitely reminded me of those crap The Outer Limits episodes.

But I'll tune in for next week's episode for Terry O'quinn.

2.76 million viewers, .8 rating in the 18-49 demo.
Link

Damn... that's in Veronica Mars territory.

I'll be surprised if they even air all six episodes.

They won't -- only airing the first four eps.

And for being shown in the asshole slot of television (Sat. @ 10), Veronica Mars territory ain't bad.

I thought the first one was decent. I will not be able to see the second as my local station is pre-empting it for preseason football and they have not rescheduled it.

^^^
Come over to the dark side Luke...we have no need of networks here.

Bump to remind folks that the second episode is airing tonight (after "Charlie's Angels: Full throttle):

The second episode, "The Awakening", stars Terry O'Quinn ("Alias", "Lost") and Elisabeth Rohm[bot] ("Law & Order").

For the most part, I liked tonight's episode, until I started to get preached to... and then the whole "The World Turns on the USA" thing was shaky, but I agreed with the ending.

Rohm[bot] wasn't that bad, and Locke O'Quinn was pretty good too (although they should have put a hairpiece on him).

I really want to read the short story that this was based on ("The General Zapped An Angel"), but I couldn't find it online (full text), but I did find a cool Valejo painting:

Why is this only on Saturday night? If I wasn't off of work yesterday night (which I was off for the first time in a LOOOOOONG time!) I wouldn't have realized this was on...I would have been waiting for it to show up in regular prime time slots. I had no idea they still showed first run programs on TV on Saturday night....I thought it was episodes of COPS and reruns of good shows from the week before.

This is how a network buries a show. ABC executives obviously didn't like the show once the episodes were delivered, so they are burning off the episodes during a low-ratings timeslot (Saturdays at 10pm ET) in a low-ratings time of the year (Summer). It's essentially filler and after they finish burning off the handful of episodes, it'll never be shown on ABC ever again (although it'll probably eventually show up on a cable channel like the Sci-Fi Channel as well as DVD sometime in the future.)

Yeah, that ticked me off, but then I turned on my TV last night when the storm was coming through, and it was on, damn program guide not up to date.

Yeah, I agree with that.

I don't mind the whole cheesy Peace angle, but it was pretty lame that the US were the only ones who were skeptical.

Haven't seen this yet...but the first episode I actually enjoyed despite the anti-US rhetoric, this week we get it again? I'll watch if only for Quinn, but if all the eps are like this, maybe it's a big reason ABC didn't air it sooner/in a better time slot?

I think being sceptical of something claiming to be a god is the smart thing to do. Though America is one of the more religious nations, so it's unlikely they'd be the hold outs.

Some SF writers think that 'good SF' means making everything into an alagory of current events and trying to make people think of them by another angle (I think that this approach is lazy, but)
Since this show is made by Americans, for Americans, obviouisly, it will focus on commenting on America.
Besides, what was so anti american? the suggestion that America sometimes acts unilaterally? I wonder where they got that from.
Just becasue america isn't shown as flawless doesn't mean that it's anti-american.

Doing religion in SF is very hard, and is rarely done well. I think Babylon 5 did a good job, casting religious like characters as aliens, and the anime series Evangelion did well by keeping a distance, and taking it as an objective reality.

Most of the time it fails because religion is not science, so in the context of a SF story, it just becomes a deus ex machina.

This episoe left a lot unexplained, like, why didn't the messengers just fly down and talk themselves, why go through all the trouble they did.
And did the president's revalation come to him on his own, or was he communicating telepathically with locke, or something?

I thought this episode was heavy-handed, preachy, and yes, a little anti-American. The idea that we're operating out of fear because we don't "get" each other is a little naive. We understand each other all too well - that's why we keep building bombs! Anyway, loved all the X-Files shout outs, and this episode confirmed for me how truly lousy an actress Elisabeth Rohm is.

Ditto.

Especially when she was crying by the car. That was bad.

Two episodes in a row involving the president and nuclear bombs.

Hey, Masters of Sci-Fi, how about a little more sci-fi?

C'mon this one had:

At least next weeks show looks like a different format

...and made even less sense by having the other countries of the world threaten to use their disarming weapons to destroy the US because they weren't agreeing to disarm their already disarming weapons. Death by plot-hole.

Yeah...and at the end, did the angel use it's powers to get the president to stand down anyway with that trance speach? This show should have lasted about 10 seconds:

Shot 1: God has thought "I am sick of war on Earth"
Shot 2: God erases all weapons on Earth
Shot 3: World Leaders confused, decide to have a potluck
Credits: Cue Marvin Gaye