Rosanne Katon and the Man With the Hairiest Chest guest star in tonight’s episode, in which, inevitably, our heroes go back to the City of Domes. Oh, all right, it’s Ross Bickell. It’s a good installment, even if the logic necessary to temporarily wipe Logan’s memory is pretty tortuous. The appearance of the most technologically advanced people we’ve met so far is glossed over to get to the events in the city.
Our son didn’t remember Katon, whom we saw in a few episodes of Jason of Star Command that originally aired a little later in 1978. Tonight, I got a good demonstration of just how six year-olds aren’t very good with faces. The plot this time requires Jessica to change her hair and clothes and see whether Logan’s memory might have returned a little after he’d been shot with an amnesia dart a little earlier. In the next scene, Logan meets up with an old girlfriend named Sheila, played by Melody Anderson. “Wow, Jessica looks different with her hair combed,” he said, as the dialogue went completely over his head. When Jessica does show up with a new ‘do and a green-blue dress, I made sure to point out it was really her. “Yeah, she combed her hair,” he said.
Some of the elements of this show really do frustrate me. We’ve frequently rolled our eyes whenever Logan zaps a sandman with his freeze ray and doesn’t take the man’s gun. Even if Jessica is reluctant to use one herself, any gun and any car that they destroy is one that can’t be used against them in the future. Their refusal to stray any farther than a day’s drive from the City of Domes is maddening. Even if Rem doesn’t have a 24th Century road map on him, surely he knows how huge the continent is and can advise them to go to the other side of it, where Francis is far less likely to follow. Now we’ve got these “higher power” dudes in the forest, who sort of feel like the spiritual TV descendants of the sort of aliens who’d routinely freeze the USS Enterprise in space and yell at Kirk in a booming voice. I think the next thing I’d do if I escaped from the city this time is head straight back to those guys and ask for some more information I can use. Surely some of this occurred to the writer, D.C. Fontana?
Fire Breathing Dimetrodon Time 
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