"You lost the Goral of your dreams."
REVIEW: Dennis Haysbert returns after missing a few episodes, and his character now has a name - Parsons - and an expanded role. And... a new uniform? There really is no continuity in this show's production design, with Wilma also wearing different uniforms through the last few episodes, and here not needing a helmet to fly a fighter. I agree, phase out the sailor uniforms, but it just seems haphazard. And continuity really IS the big problem with The Hand of the Goral... See, the episode is meant to build paranoia about "fakes" simulated by the long-abandoned Ver-Deeth, the "Planet of Death". Buck and Hawk find themselves on a fake Searcher when they try to return home, but everything's a little off, from the view outside the window to the personalities of their crew mates. Asimov is a paranoid martinet, Crichton is pleasant, Twiki is not, and Wilma jumps into Buck's arms at the first whiff of danger. But are they really acting strangely? Asimov, sure. Crichton, well, he's just been rebooted, so who knows? Twiki and Goodfellow are irritable, but still sound like themselves. And Wilma's pretty much become a recurring damsel in distress since the beginning of Season 2. Except when she's brave and competent. Without continuity between episodes, the context for these "changes" is undermined, and we can only take Buck's word for it that something is amiss here or there. Except where it's dreadfully obvious, and then there's really no trick to figuring it out. I should think the more subtle fact that when a room came crashing down on their heads, Hawk was selfless and Wilma was selfish was the real clue, but that situation false posits that only one of them can be saved.
The episode even cuts to the real Searcher early so as to give up the game, and the back-and-forth is rather confusing. But the ship disappears when Buck and Hawk return to the planet to confront whatever's holding the real Searcher in a tractor beam. 10,000 years ago, there was an exodus from this place (so still not one of the Tribes of Man) and they left a hologram in charge. Despite the Spanish style of the ruins, the interiors and sole inhabitant look Buddhist. It's all been a test, we're told, and they passed. (Easiest "Find the 7 Mistakes" I ever played.) The last test is that the Searcher will be destroyed from a "fake" aboard, and if they solve THAT one, they'll be masters of Ver-Deeth where every wish can come true. Spoiler: They do solve it, and they don't. The Hand of the Goral acts like they failed after all. I don't know what to tell you. Anyway, not too hard to figure out the castaway they found on the planet is a Ver-Deethian simulacrum, but he's changed his appearance to look like Parsons to confound the crew. A crew that is very easy to confound because they need Buck to remind them that the reactor room is a sensitive spot from where the ship could be destroyed. The Searcher's crew was so busy looking through broom closets that they never thought to search this first, or put guards on it. Blindingly stupid. Of course, fake-Parsons is rumbled when the real Parsons shows up outside, though the Lieutenant doesn't seem to be on hand for scenes inside the reactor room because he's absent when they go back in. More consistency problems in a story where telling visions from reality is important.
The bad pun at the end is worth throwing cushions around, and the episode mostly makes me feel like we're due an Asimov martinet/screw-up story.
STAR GAZING: John Fujioka (The Hand of the Goral) was a hard-working Japanese-American actor from the '60s to the early 2000s, perhaps best known for playing Todo in Tales of the Gold Monkey, though he has small roles in Mortal Kombat, Pearl Harbor and The Last Samurai.
REWATCHABILITY: Low - Could have been Buck Rogers' "Mirror, Mirror"' but it's so badly put together at every level, it achieves very little.
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