In one season 4 episode, the Solomons’ mission leader, The Big Giant Head, grants Sally’s request to be turned into a man; he swaps her body with Dick’s. So essentially, we have an alien male in a human woman’s body who switches body with another alien male in a human male body. Don’t go back and reread that sentence; I know it is just as confusing as it is unbelievable. And the list goes on — the show had a successful six-season run, which means more than a hundred episodes worth of wildly unusual scenarios for our protagonists. So, I’m curious to know what did French Stewart see on set that made him go, “Oh, we’ve gone too far.”
But to Stewart’s point about ensuring that every story was anchored by some sort of realty, most — if not all — the goofball and hilarious dilemmas were grounded in the sense that they directly related to the characters’ personal journeys to find their places as ordinary citizens on planet Earth. The body swap episode makes sense because Sally had long yearned to be a male again. The episode in which the Solomons handpick their own racial identities only to find out that they’re Jewish fits the premise. Even the extra outlandish 3D episode, which was intended to send a not-so-thrilling message to NBC, centered on our alien characters having their first dreams, a natural human experience.
I never saw an episode of “3rd Rock from the Sun” that made me question the credibility of the show. Yeah, it was over the top, but given its premise, over the top is exactly what the show needed to be.