Consider the number "888." It's just a number, right? For people of The Middle Kingdom, this number has mystical properties. If you visited the land of Terra Cotta warriors, would you know that? Some things in a civilization/culture/tribe can't be found unless you know what to look for, short of talking with a local. As for this first contact tale, it has the look and feel of cross cultural questions and conflicts on present day Terra.

@Invidia said:

Any planet that close to it's SUN would have lost it's atmosphere and oceans a long time before this one did. Look at MERCURY (which also looks like it's further away from the SUN than this other planet was).

And life UNDERGROUND would also be UNBEARABLE and IMPOSSIBLE to maintain way before that happened, due to the way the temperatures would probably be in the 4,000 F range as the SUN SWELLED (which would also MELT ROCK … (turning it into LAVA) … thus also making it impossible to exist UNDERGROUND ... where ROCK is also already in a LIQUIDFIED state if you go down far enough) .

So when none of what we see happening is REALISTIC to begin with, why not exaggerate the rest of it and make it just as UNREALISTIC as well???

And WHY didn't they also send down at least 2 SHUTTLE CRAFTS ... when they also had 2 characters who could PILOT them … and when they also already knew that TIME was an issue ... and that ONE SHUTTLE could only hold less than HALF of those who needed to be RESUCED???

The ROBOT character claims to be so much more CLEVER than the others, but even HE didn't anticipate the loss of more than HALF of those they RESCUED by using only ONE SHUTTLE.

You're referring to the wrong episode. That was season 2, episode 2, "Primal Urges."

Meanwhile, in reference to the actual episode"The World is a Birthday Cake"...

Their "solution" was clever in its own way, but it seems to me it would have been even better to remind those people that those "star signs" they're seeing are of objects maybe hundreds of light-years away. Which means they aren't seeing where those things ARE, but where they WERE. So their whole "Schedule" is cockeyed.

Especially by putting the "solar sail" so close that the "aliens" would be able to figure out what really happened, it was only a temporary solution. Maybe enough to get their own people out, but once the truth was discovered, they could go right back to how they were before. My solution, on the other hand, would be permanent.

Also, this episode seemed like a rehash of "Mad Idolatry" from season 1.

"Primitive cultures have ridiculous superstitions," blah blah blah.

Heck, I'd take "Birthday Cake" Oreos ahead of a vampire.