Just watched this one yesterday, myself. The continuity things always bothered me. Remember, my first FS eps were DNA Mad Scientist and They've Got a Secret, then I saw the rest of season one before this one, so I already saw John behaving, for the most part, like he knew what he was doing. He made some mistakes, but he wasn't nearly as "golly gee" as he was in this eppy.
I did like that this one reminded John of exactly what he had lost. His "this stuff coulda been made on Earth" line and his interaction with the kid were desined for that. And his last shot in the tag, too, when Aeryn says, " Don't tell me you're going to miss that rock." He says, "No, not
that rock." You can just see in his face the ache to go home. He was just reminded of
our scientists,
our military,
our dreams as a planet-bound people, and it makes him miss his home.
Watching these early eps again, made me realize just how many writers they had back then... when each new ep was written by someone different. I think the continuity was looser because of that and the fast pace the crew tried to maintain for the network.
The things that bugged me the most was the "alien" characters use of language like damn, hell, minute, year, hour, etc. Once, later in the season, their individual languages were established (when I started watching) it was just jarring to hear them use English for these things. (Now, it's fun to hear them attempt to use English.)
