Going on a reconnaissance mission behind potentially dangerous enemy lines should never be taken lightly. And that would be doubly true for aliens coming to Earth. Humans can be pretty unpredictable, something the crew on 3rd Rock from the Sun learned over their six-year mission. But that mission was originally supposed to be much shorter than that and it dragged on thanks to its leader, Dick Solomon.
While it was never revealed where exactly they were from or what they really looked like, the Solomon family was certainly not what they seemed. This group of aliens arrived on Earth in the form of the typical American family. Their covers were exhaustively researched. Well, except for the fact that Tommy only created their backgrounds going back a few years and they got their name off the side of a bread truck.
The Solomons came to Earth to research the planet and its people. And it was supposed to be a relatively short mission, one that was fully completed by the end of Season 1, Episode 1. However, what they found out when they got to Earth was that humanity was far more complicated than they could have ever suspected. As such, the Solomons ended up living as humans for the next several years.
The complexity of humans seems like a logical reason to extend the mission, but that was not the case. In truth, the Solomons stayed on Earth for so long so Dick could spend time with Dr. Mary Albright. He essentially fell in love with her almost immediately, despite not really knowing what love was. Dick justified staying on the planet longer by saying there was more to research. That wasn’t technically a lie, but it was a cover for the truth.
The rest of Dick’s team wasn’t exactly happy with the situation. Sally was already annoyed that she ended up having to be the woman, though she did grow to love that throughout the series. Tommy was upset about being an alien veteran who was technically older than Dick and was essentially trapped in the body of a pre-pubescent student. Harry might have been upset but it was hard to tell. The guy wasn’t always fully aware of what was going on.
At the same time, the rest of the family ended up in a similar situation to Dick. Sally would go on to have a serious relationship with Officer Don Orville. Tommy had more than a few girlfriends and eventually went to college. Harry had an on-again, off-again relationship with Vicki Dubcek that ended when the leader of the aliens, the Big Giant Head, stole her away from him. It was a whole thing.
The mission may have been extended by Dick’s feelings for Mary but the rest of his crew were all in on their new lives, as well. When the series came to an end with Season 6, Episode 20, none of them wanted to go. They left out of a sense of duty to their people but they also would have been more than happy to live on Earth as humans for the rest of their natural lives, whatever that turned out to be.
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