“People who can forget how important it is to know how to read can forget anything.”
- Release Date: 27th January 2003
- Season 1
- Episode 18
- Director: Will Meugniot
- Writers: Richard Mueller
The team arrive on a planet to find some abandoned radio telescopes. There’s a comet passing by in the sky as well, and a city in the distance. They decide to wait until the morning to head to the city, so Ec’co checks out the satellites. He discovers that the comet is on a collision course for the planet, and that they have 60 hours before impact. They need to warn the people in the city.
The streets in the city seem empty, and Stacey notices that all the signs are pictures, there seems to be no written text anywhere. They encounter an alien running, pursued by robots.Harrison tries to stop the robots, but he gets told off, saying the robots might be the police. They let him get captured (with the robots destroying what looks like a newspaper) and are contacted by the government, whom they agree to meet.
When they tell the Commonality about the comet, they all dismiss them, as comets fly by often and never hit. Ec’co says his calculations are correct, and they try to dismiss them by pointing out the direction of the tail, which Ec’co explains doesn’t represent its movement, as it’s moisture blasted off by the sun, so will always be away from the sun. Stacey says to look it up in a book (an odd thing to say on an alien world as you have no idea of what they know) and they reveal that they banned written language for being too primitive.
Bonner realises they’re heading nowhere so says Ec’co made a mistake (much to Ec’co’s bewilderment) and they leave, destroying the guard robots as they’re escorted away. Bonner says he lied to get away, and they break out the Rokari they saw get arrested earlier, as he had written with him. This leads to a car chase, but they lose them and Donral takes them to a hidden library.
They try studying the books, but nobody knows the language. With them running out of time, and them needing to start evacuating people very soon, Bonner decides he needs to fight his way to the broadcast room to send a message, and Draga helps him. As they fight, Ec’co gets frustrated about not being able to work out the text, saying the computer can’t even seem to see it.
Harrison comes up with an idea – what if three eyes are required to see this text (the Rokari have three eyes). Ec’co tries this and it works, and quickly finds out that there is a system for destroying comets. Bonner breaks into the broadcast room and explains this. The leader refuses to accept it, but the second in command seems to have her doubts about him. Bonner picks him up and takes him to the satellite.
Ec’co rushes to them and activates the defence, which destroys the comet. The leader resigns and the new leader says they will teach their people how to read, to avoid the loss of knowledge. Out of nowhere, Stacey hands Donral a book (no idea where she got it from, or the wrapping paper) and refuses to say what it is, which is just a really odd ending.
This episode has some interesting ideas that aren’t quite enough to delve into in a short cartoon, but they handle the length of it quite well.
