Months and months ago, I spent maybe sixty seconds, if that, commiserating with our son, who doesn’t like bugs, that when I was a kid, cockroaches freaked me out as well, on account of some great big ones in the film of Damnation Alley. So tonight I said that I had considered skipping tonight’s episode because, well, you may remember, young man, I said, back in the summer I mentioned a movie that gave me the heebie-jeebies when I was about your a–
“Not the giant cockroaches!” Unreal. This child can’t remember anybody’s name, whether actors or friends, has lost at least twenty bucks to the washing machine because he forgets to clean his pockets, and thinks restaurants in Blue Ridge GA are actually in Fayetteville TN, but he remembers The Thing With Two Heads and a one-off, months-old mention of oversized palmetto bugs.
So anyway, yes, “The Scourge” is a gross-out episode with a trillion carnivorous bugs. It owes a considerable debt to both Damnation Alley and that bit from Creepshow with E.G. Marshall. It features the return of Robert Picardo as Woolsey, only the writers chose to make him more stupid this time, I’m pretty sure they used that cave set in a couple of episodes of Atlantis, and the kid, who had a blanket over his head for much of this, is unlikely to ever forget it.
Fire Breathing Dimetrodon Time 