This Friday on 'TR 2070' ep 9 'Baby Lottery'

I admit the title of this one intrigued me: did it mean future parents have to be selected in a lottery to have a child? After seeing it, I suppose it actually referred to the “lottery” of genetics, and not knowing what traits your child will grow up to have.

Apparently in the future, any kind of therapy for your child's problems is only available if you submit to genetic testing to remove any unfavorable genes from them. Curiously, the process cannot be performed if the child is too far along in the womb. You’d think it would be just the opposite; the more advanced the child is in the womb the easier to perform some sort of corrective surgery on them. But, no matter. Here, the couple is too far along (six months) in the pregnancy for any corrections and have to accept the consequences. Their newborn son is taken away at birth because he has some vaguely described genetic defect that might make him prone to violence in the future. This is certainly in line with current technology that is trying to remove “defective genes” from people.

The baby is kidnapped from the center which was holding the baby (Reproductive Selection Board – chillingly appropriate title). Hume and Farve are sent to investigate, and the RSB rep Englen immediately tries to brush them off – “oh, it must be the parents. Rush off and question them right away.” Instead, looking around nets them another man and woman, Bill and Loran, trying to break into the file room. But they clam up except for insisting that they had authorization to be there and look at the files. The story checks out and they are released. Going back to RSB, they find Englen gone and instead Pontifex, played by Clint Howard. Clint was a former child star who made the transition to adult acting, though he often plays sleazy characters. Here he turns out to be the good guy, trying to help the parents get their child back and spirit them away to “the territories” where they can raise their child like normal parents.

Meanwhile, it turns out the other “couple” are far from nice. They want the baby because that same gene that might may you “prone to violence” could also have leadership qualities as well. This makes sense in a way – the gene might just make you passionate, which could inspire violence or ingenuity depending on what you became passionate about. They want to duplicate this rare gene, which is apparently usually bred out before birth - or even before conception if I heard correctly. Pontifex, who has already killed Bill, helps our guys find the baby and the parents before Loran can. She’s assisted by a Beta android that Hume has trouble killing even with his anti-tank gun and finally has to run him down, while Farve takes out Loran nicely with a little mini-laser shot to the head that knocks her flat but gives him plenty of time to take the baby out of her arms. (It was so quick, I had to go back and replay it.) Pontifex takes a laser to the back, dying heroically.

As I (and I figure everyone else) was hoping, David and Ian turn their heads and let the Mannings walk off with their baby. When Ian confirms with David that this is what they are doing, he suggests meeting their back-up far away to give the Mannings as big a head start as possible. He gets it, just as he did when he gently picked up the baby for the first time and looked at him with a sense of wonder. The father has a beautiful line that he says to Hume, “I hope someday you have a son, so you can know how grateful I am.” Yes, that’s a tear running down my cheek as I write this.

This episode get an official six RSB representatives getting hauled off to jail, perhaps to join some Planned Parenthood people still serving sixty year terms for selling baby parts. But unofficially, I turn my head and let 4 more points get added on for a 10. What can I say? I’m a sucker for stories about parents reunited with their children. And it was nice to see Clint Howard play the good guy for once.

I have to say that sometimes this show jams so much complex information in such a little time that it's difficult to follow what's going on. Plus they use so many acronyms and arcane language sometimes that I have go back and double check what they're speaking about. It seems like there wasn't much thought about introducing the viewers slowly into this modern world with any kind of long term story arc.

So it seams that basically in 2070 pregnant mothers are checked during pregnancy for abnormal gene development. Not only physical impairments but also problematic personality tendencies. So it seems like they have the ability to go into the womb in some sort of micro surgical technique and fix those problems. There's also some talk about a terrible ecological disaster around 2020 which forced women to undergo extensive precautions during the pregnancy. But the catch is that if you don't have the procedure and the children are born with a disability or a personality tendency, the state can then take your child away into an extensive therapy regiment for 4-5 years. After 4-5 years the children are put into a lottery systems for adoptive parents.

There's also people that rebel against these procedures and live on the outskirts in the territories.

So we meet a couple that has a child with one of those possible aggressive criminal genes. Basically their child is taking away from them at birth and brought to the state controlled RSB. Someone kidnaps the baby and most people assume that it's the birth couple so Hume and Farvre are called in to investigate. They find the birth couple and they basically re-hash some of the same story. Hume and Farvre meet up with a Mr. Pontifex (Clint Howard) and he seems evasive like he's hiding something. While at the RSB the find a couple trying to break into the security code. They're arrested and brought into CPB custody.

It ends up that the couple work for another corporation that wants the specific gene from the child so they were breaking into the computer system to get it. It ends up that the RSB actually works with this company because they throw some money to the RSB.

The male member is killed at the birth couple's house and Clint Howard is arrested. It ends up that he's a good guy in this scenario and wanted to give the child back to the birth parents but was almost thwarted by the male so he killed him to protect the child.

The birth couple goes off into what's known only as "The territories". Howard leads Hume and Farve to an underground garage system so they can protect the child from the female. There's the usual confrontation at the 35:00 mark and the good guys win but Clint Howard dies. Hume and Farve let the birth couple go into the territories and escape.

Random Thoughts:

*Way too much information being jamed packed in this episode without giving it enough time. There's also so much information being introduced for the first time, like the whole baby lottery system and the forced genetic surgery and outer territories and government control of pregnancies, and the genetic disturbance of 2020.

*I think this is the first episode without Olan

*They're kind of sporadic with Hume's wife and that story line. She was in a couple episodes early on and then she disappeared, now she was back for a minor part.

*This episode really needed to be edited down, way too many moving parts. I would have like to know more about the genetic disaster of 2020.

*A problem with the series is that there wasn't enough expose about this future society in the beginning.

I give it a 6 out of 10. I think there might have been a really provocative episode in here if they edited it and let the episode breathe a little.

I think this story would be more fitting for an early science fiction story. Maybe a Bradbury.
With all we know now about child psychology they would not be putting children in an institution setting and thinking they would be raising mentally healthy individuals that way. It would have made more sense to me if they had shown the children were put away for life. Harsh but at least not a fairy dust way of thinking about child development. Or even made the story we don’t care about these children but put them into an institution because we are looking for specific genes that we need to exploit. This turns out what the one company was doing but I am talking about the whole RSB program.

Take for example this baby. What would have made more sense and still have been invading the family structure would be that the family has to take parenting classes the whole time they are raising the child and as a family have constant monitoring. Truly I think the father needed it anyway.

I really did not like how several times they said these are not children with physical deformities as though they all agreed that those children should be put away from society. Now I could see that happening in a future society but it would have been nice to have a character who didn’t feel this was right like Hume thought it was not right about the gene children.

I understand suspending belief to advance a story. But you can’t go against the science everyone knows at the time of writing. This story would have worked in the 1950’s not the 1990’s. Like I say if they had gone further and said they did not care about the children that would have been fine as a science fiction story but did not care for the way they portrayed the storyline.

On learning more about the Total Recall world this episode we learned there is an underground resistance and there is an outland territory. We also learn that not all the war androids were destroyed. I am sure if this series had not been cancelled those would have played into future episodes.

I do like how they are showing the Hume’s marriage at this point. They now communicate and support each other. I like this much better than how the marriage was shown at the start of the series.

Could someone who maybe watched more closely than I did explain something to me. They talked several times about a baby lottery as if only certain people can have children but on the other had they kept asking Hume if he was going to have children. How do these two things work together?

Oops, I forgot to give a rating. So the story seemed to be something that would have fit a 1950’s science fiction book. So down score for that.
Liked how they are building the marriage and police partnerships so up score for that.
I guess I give it a 6 out of 10.

The minute I saw Pontifex, I thought, "Clint Howard did it!" He first appears in a short scene, trying to fool us, meaning that Pontifex is just another guy in the series of guys Hume and Farve interview, but when we have some mystery man reveal, of course it's Clint Howard. (By the way, Pontifex... Is that a Talaxian name? Remember Neelix?)

But it turns out his motives were good, while I was expecting the kind of story in which he would have kidnapped the child for selfish reasons, maybe because his kid died and he and his wife couldn't adopt, or something. But no, he wanted to help the couple reach the Territories. (Just where the heck are these Territories anyway?)

I have an observation about the show, something I'm starting to realize now. This is the kind of show I enjoyed very much back in the 1980s and 1990s, but not so much today, when I tend to prefer serialized stories. But TR 2070 bears the storytelling identity we'd expect in the last couple of decades of the last century.

This is deceptive, because in the aspects of setting and atmosphere, it looks like a much more recent show. Oh, well, perhaps if CBS produced it now, it would be a procedural like this (minus the nudity). (Come to think of it, in many ways this reminds me of the also cancelled show Almost Human (2013), minus the banter between partners. Almost Human was the kind of show that brought up interesting points, but, unfortunately, favored the procedural aspect much more.)

When analyzing the episode of an old series, we may get tempted to observe it under the criteria we'd expect to find today. So, we see lots of topics that would have been explored in more detailed by modern serialized shows, like a society in which genetic screening determines who will become a part of it, Gattaca (1997) style (well, a 1990s show after all), genetic mutations caused by alterations in the environment, the government screening its citizens in order to get more compliant citizens. That, indeed, would be a terrible and controversial thing to happen, and it could be easily misused.

Instead, the show uses all these enticing ingredients just as an appetizer to set the background for a "human interest" story in which family and, if not adoptive, but adoptable children this time are featured. OK, David and Olivia begin to question the validity of the show thing, but his questions are more like rhetorical ones, since no real debate, with no real consequences occur.

But yeah, sure disruptive behavior has a lot to do with leadership. No wonder it was Evil Captain Kirk the one with the ability to lead. And based on the baby's father's records, he was more prone to take part in protest manifestations than commiting any real crime, which makes me think the government may treat political dissidents as badly as bank robbers, perhaps worse. THAT would be something I'd like to see. Oh, well, again, I must remind myself not to judge this show based on new shows.

And to think that, last week, I wondered if there were ever any kids in this show. OK, my question about the absence of children has been answered, and I hope they don't reward us with a third episode about children next week.

OK, "Baby Lottery" gets how many points? Let's find out. Let's roll the raffle drum! Rolling... Rolling... Rolling... And this time your lottery prize is... 6 (Six) 1999 71-year old Ford Taurus SHO (for Showtime) sedans!

Enjoyed this episode immensely. Very believable plot about genetics,considering what can be done now in this field. Any society that can make such a cruel judgement on a baby and not consider the affect good parenting can have is a sick society. Nice to have a happy ending and we also saw some daylight I think shining in through a window.
Going back to the "society" allowing,encouraging RSB and their work , who does control this city,? Who are the lawmakers? Is RSB a nationwide set up. This is the first episode since the start that outside territories are mentioned. I'd love to see Hume and Favre journey to another city to follow a lead but as I said last time this is a designed city to fit the storylines not a prediction of the future. In fact if you didn't know this was set on Earth you could envisage this taking place on a huge space station,it has a Babylon 5 feel to it, that series had a "underground" city sized community in the bowels of the station.
8 cute little babies out of 10 screened who might turn into psychos