An attempt to create a minor quake to see how Los Angeles should be further shored up in the future actually causes a huge shift in the San Andreas fault and wipes out much of the coast. Frank's attempt to backstep makes things worse, however, when he acquires a strange creature en route.

It's a daft concept blatantly stolen from The Twilight Zone's Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, but somehow it works, mainly due to the rapid flow of ideas that make it look really cool. Suddenly, I understood all the stock footage in last week's episode: they were saving the money for the time-warping effects in this one.

Admittedly, if the gremlin really wanted to cause havoc, it could shut down Project Backstep with ease, but where would be the fun in that? Instead it plays a whole host of malicious tricks on everyone, freezing some people, aging Olga, making Mentnor into a kid, putting Donovan into a time loop and the best one, speeding up Ballard so he is unable to communicate. The way it acts subtly at first to confuse Frank allows for some nifty time-related tricks, such as 30 minutes passing in a second, something Parker throws returning to his hand, and Olga entering his room twice. All these plus the fantastic frozen people and objects that Olga and Frank come across make for a visual feast and livens up what is an otherwise simple story.

It's a shame that the ending is so simple and unlikely (Frank going into space with no protection from the elements to shake out the gremlin) and that Donovan still never quite gets as far as making a backstep, but otherwise this is a fun 45 minutes.

****

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