Tim Curry Was The First Villain On This Underrated '90s Sci-Fi Show

While the world continues to mourn following the August 25 passing of acting legend Tim Curry, fans are remembering the highlights of his legendary career. While movies like "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and "Clue" are easy to recollect, not to mention "It," one of the best horror shows of the '90s, it may be harder to call to mind a short-lived '90s science fiction show that showed promise but never quite got off the ground. 

"Earth 2" premiered in 1994 and took place in a futuristic time when Earth is uninhabitable and people resort to living in space stations. A small group decides to travel to a distant planet that is habitable and set up a colony there. That's when they run into Curry's character, Gaal, who at first claims to simply be a stranded astronaut but in truth is so much more.

The band of heroes eventually learns that Gaal is actually a killer who was abandoned on the planet years ago as his punishment. During his arc over the show's first four episodes, they find out that while on the planet, he has also enslaved an indigenous species, making this one of Curry's most diabolical villain roles of all time. In the end, he's defeated and left alone with the creatures that he enslaved, presumably meeting a grizzly end. But since the show was canceled after one season, we never get to learn about the official end of his story.

"Earth 2" got off to a rough start before it even premiered. Originally it was supposed to debut alongside the 2nd season of "SeaQuest DSV," both of which were being produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin production company. But after watching the pilot episode, Spielberg was so disappointed in the show, he pulled his name from the series' credits and the pilot was dramatically reshot. The show was jokingly referred to as "Gilligan's Planet" behind closed doors at Amblin, according to DreamWatch magazine at the time.

When the show finally did debut, it got off to a strong start, finishing in eighth place for the week. Unfortunately, those numbers didn't hold, and the show tumbled to a 78th-place finish for the season. While there was plenty of fodder for the writers to build upon, they unfortunately never got the chance, as NBC canceled "Earth 2" after just the one season.

That singular season did lead to three Emmy nominations, and one win for visual effects, with many critics specifically singling out Tim Curry's performance as a highlight of the show. Unfortunately, that performance is now almost as hard to find as Curry's turn as the voice of the Joker. "Earth 2" is currently unavailable to stream on any platform, although you can find rather grainy uploads on YouTube.