Laura End of the world. It�s one of the first episodes but in my mind it was the one that actually kicked off the season and set the tone for it, it�s deeply romantic.

It�s a very classic perfect science fiction set-up of your future self coming back to change the actions of yourself in the present tense. It�s a great, simple, elegant science fiction construct. What Jason Katims, who wrote the episode, did with it was to take the science fiction construct and put the Romeo and Juliet romance right into the same construct.

So Max comes back from the future and tells Liz "I love you, we�re completely meant to be together, we got married, we had this wonderful life together and guess what, you have to stop it from ever happening again. If we get together the world will come to an end".

Literally, what could be the more dire consequences of star cross love?

Mel And [Max] says, "you know you can never tell me because I wouldn�t believe you, I wouldn�t let you go."

So it�s a heartbreaking episode because Liz is put in this horrible position of having to push Max away without being able to tell him why.

Laura It�s a great Max and Liz story and it�s a great science fiction story and the stakes are so high both with the romance�

Mel ...and the end of the world.