Teri Garr, as cute and young as I have ever seen her, plays the "temp" secretary to a human "alien" named Gary Seven (Robert Lansing). He is an undercover secret agent from an unknown planet sent on a peaceful mission to keep Earth "on-track" so it doesn't destroy itself before maturing into an advanced society centuries later. He crosses paths with The Enterprise, which is on a historical fact-finding mission to update and correct 20th century knowledge of Earth, circa 1968. Cleverly done using a lot of "stock" NASA footage, some of which matches well, and some that looks very generic and grainy. Gary Seven's assignment in this "pilot" episode is to cause the U.S. nuclear satellite to almost start WWIII, by malfunctioning with a live warhead. This will somehow prevent the actual war from ever happening. A fun episode. His cat, "Isis" transforms to human-like form, momentarily, at the very end. (She still purrs.) Of course, she is a "knock-out"! A glimpse at a TV series that could have been a lot of fun but never happened. The last episode of the original series season two. Season three was in jeopardy and almost didn't happen! Gary Seven's multipurpose pen devise looks a lot like Men-in-Black's memory zapper, doesn't it?
Review of Assignment: Earth
