The series was created by Billy Ray, Michael Duggan, Carol Flint, and Mark Levin, produced by Amblin Entertainment and Universal Television,[3] and filmed primarily in northern New Mexico around the Santa Fe area.

With her group scattered on the planet and supplies missing, Devon marshals what survivors she can find and begins heading west to the planned site of New Pacifica.

During their travels, Adair and her companions slowly learn to cope with life on the alien world, which at first seems superficially Earth-like but which is gradually revealed to have a very different ecology, including at least two different native sentient and humanoid species—a short and stout race at the level of development of hunter-gatherers, with a propensity towards kleptomania, known as "Grendlers" and the much taller and lankier "Terrians", who are capable of telepathic communication, can tear rents and tunnels in the earth through a pseudo-psychic process and whose well-being is somehow linked to that of the planet.

This complicates matters, because Devon's son, who has been healed by the Terrians and begun to exhibit some of their unique characteristics, has become the key to the Council's plan for the planet.

The interactions among the original crew, the convicts, the government and the local aliens and their planet forms the basis of many of the story's plot lines, as the colonists learn more about their new home while trying to avoid detection by the Council.

Earth 2 broke new ground by placing Devon Adair as one of the first female commanders in a science fiction television show, preceding the much better-known Captain Kathryn Janeway of Star Trek: Voyager by more than two months.

[5] The overarching plot of the show and various individual elements helped explore the Gaia hypothesis, mainly through the Syndrome, its effects on many children, and the subsequent healing of the illness after the Eden Project arrives on G889.

In "Redemption", the group encounters a genetically enhanced killer called Z.E.D., who was left on the planet to dispose of all the humans he finds,[18] who at the time had been criminals.

Exterior shots filmed in New Mexico locations such as Kasha Katuwe Tent Rocks[24] and Diablo Canyon,[24] provided the setting for the series.

[25][26]) A group of humans leaves the space stations in Earth orbit to travel to a planet 22 light-years away named G889 in hopes of a better life for sick children afflicted with an illness known only as "the syndrome".

It was also aired in Austria, Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Spain and United Kingdom, later in 1995 Greece and Egypt in the fall of 1997, and in Turkey and Norway in 1998.

[citation needed] The complete series, comprising 21 episodes including the two-hour pilot, was released on DVD on July 19, 2005, in the United States in Region 1 format, on four dual-sided discs.