Dark Matter, on Apple TV+

Somewhere in the multiverse, there must be an alternate Chicago that is a safe, peaceful city, with high-performing schools and a thriving economy. Obviously, that is not the Chicago of our universe. It is not Jason Dessen’s Chicago either, but he is definitely trying to find it again, to reunite with his wife and son—the ones he knows. Dessen’s unwilling odyssey through the multiverse unfolds in creator Blake Crouch’s 9-episode Dark Matter, adapted from his original novel, which premieres today on Apple TV+.

Instead of becoming Richard Feynman, Dessen married Daniela Vargas and had his moody teenaged son, Charlie. It was worth it, but sometimes he wonders what might have been. The other Jason Dessen does not have to wonder. He became a hot shot physicist who built the “box” that serves as a portal between parallel universes, but he envies our Dessen’s happy family life. Consequently, he kidnaps the Dessen viewers identify with, marooning him in his own universe, so he can replace “our” Dessen with his family.

Despite his new wealth, Dessen desperately wants to return to his family, once he figures out why his life is suddenly so radically different. Amanda Lucas, the alternate Dessen’s lover and co-worker agrees to help him escape their industrialist boss, but navigating the box is a tricky endeavor. The first few doors they open nearly lead to disastrous consequences.

The box is a very cool riff on Schrodinger that sort of symbolically puts those who enter into super-position, with the help of psychotropic drugs. It is complicated to explain, but it represents some nifty speculative science fiction. Unfortunately, the characters are not nearly as interesting. In fact, they are mostly a rather annoying assembly of dull, joyless neurotics. That definitely includes Dessen—all of them.

That human factor definitely matters. It is ironic that we need to make that point regarding Dark Matter, since that is ostensibly the whole point of the series. The notable exception would be Jennifer Connelly’s various performances as the multi-Vargas Dessens. She has the most opportunities to play variations on her character, which she fully capitalizes on. Each multi-verse Daniela is recognizably similar, yet distinctive in her own ways.

Beacon 23, on MGM+

In this far-future universe, AI’s have some legal recognition of sentience, so maybe the new actor and screenwriter contracts will be invalidated. Of course, they are still programmed to serve mankind and given Asimov-esque prime directives. Frankly, humanity has more pressing work for them than movie-making, because starvation and strife are strangling the far-flung human colonies. This “space lighthouse” is stationed in a remote corner of the galaxy, but it might be on the frontlines of human evolution and first contact in creator Zak Penn’s Beacon 23, based on the novel by Hugh Howey, which premieres tomorrow on MGM+.

Due to a freak malfunction, Beacon-keeper Solomon Smythe is unable to warn an approaching space cruiser of the dark matter iceberg in its path. Only one soul is saved aboard the life-pod he rescues. As luck would have it, she is Aster Calyx, an operative of the QTA company, dispatched to investigate the mysterious rocks he discovered orbiting the beacon.

Complications soon set in when Bart, the station AI unmasks Smythe as military deserter Halan Kai Nelson, who replaced the real Smythe. Nelson tries to hold Calyx captive, but her personal semi-sentient holographic AI, Harmony, soon has her freed. She and Nelson will have to forge an uneasy truce to defend the station against the pirates (or “wreckers”) we see forcibly entering the station during the first episode’s prologue. Indeed, they seem to have a lot in common when they start to understand how the stones drew them both to Beacon 23.

This is sort of “big dumb object” science fiction, except the “artifact” seems smarter than any of the characters. It is also a lot like Solaris, but with more action (which isn’t hard to accomplish). The AI can also be a bit twitchy, but Bart never goes the full HAL 9000. You might recognize many elements, but Penn and the writers re-assemble them in ways that feel fresh.

The alliance between Calyx and Nelson evolves in a manner that is interesting and credible. Lena Headey and Stephan James develop a nice on-screen rapport that definitely helps the series flow. Yet, some of best episodes are flashbacks to earlier eras on the Beacon. Howey’s source novel is a “fixed-up” of five related short stories, which is reflected in the series. However, in this case, it brings more variety that actually distinguishes Beacon 23 from other recent shows (like The Ark or Silo, also based on a Howey novel). Every major flashback is justified (except maybe the in media res opening), because they establish information and events that will be hugely significant later.

The Man Who Fell to Earth, Season One (and Only), on DVD

Nobody is ever going to forget David Bowie starred in Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth, so, wisely, the creators of this series avoided any need to accuse the “Wild Eyed Boys” of “toxic fandom.” Their series adaptation of Walter Tevis’s novel builds on the 1976 film, instead of trying to tear it down (in a way that is somewhat akin to the 2022 Quantum Leap series). Let’s give thanks to Bowie, for being such an icon. Decades after Thomas Jerome Newton arrived on Earth, another alien from Anthea comes looking for him in Alex Kurtzman & Jenny Lumet’s 10-episode The Man Who Fell to Earth, which releases this Tuesday on DVD.

It turns out Newton was an adept, whereas Faraday is just a drone on Anthea. Yes, this series’ intergalactic sociology is as didactically class-conscious as afternoon tea at the Glasgow Labour Party HQ. Environmental catastrophe is also on the horizon for us, but it is already choking Anthea to death. Newton was supposed to be the planet’s best hope, but he has gone dark, thanks to human fears and his own adoption of earthly vices. Faraday is supposed to get him back on track. Of course, his name really isn’t Faraday. He just picks it up from the intake officer, who processes him after he is arrested for being naked and weird.

Aside from Newton, the only name Faraday has in his mental rolodex is that of Justin Falls (presumably short for “Justina”), who should have invented cold fusion, but came up tragically short. According to his instructions, Faraday is supposed to help her finish the job, but he needs the double-secret patents locked in the vault of Newton’s old tech company. Falls was already taking care of her daughter and her ailing father, but she reluctantly agrees to guide Faraday on his quest.

After Newton went-off the grid (and we mean way, way off), the Flood family took over the company with the CIA’s backing. Yes, the CIA are the bad guys, yet again. Spencer Clay is the worst of them—and also the most neurotic. Newton has been one of his two driving obsessions, so when he discovers the arrival of a new Anthean, he hopes Faraday can lead him to Newton.

The reclusive weirdo really is out there somewhere. Occasionally, he will even communicate with Faraday, his former drone back in the day, through the Force, or whatever. Who could credibly step into David Bowie’s platform shoes? Actually, the casting of Bill Nighy is pretty shrewd. He has a similar physicality and he projects the right degree of oddity. Each episode is titled after a Bowie song too, so Kurtzman and Lumet definitely show the proper respect.

The first six episodes or so are surprisingly engaging, thanks in large measure to Chiwetel Ejiofor’s distinctive performance as Faraday. Instead of cutely quirky, like Starman or Brother from Another Planet, he is so alien (literally) he is almost non-functional. Naomie Harris portrays Falls with toughness and sensitivity that successfully counterbalances him. She is definitely one of the best things going for the series. Plus, Martha Plimpton has a terrific guest shot in the first episode as Officer Faraday and Zoe Wanamaker is a showstopper as Watt, Faraday’s unlikely advisor.

Pantheon, on AMC+

In Beautiful Dreamer, author Ken Liu previously introduced us to a terminally ill mother, who went to extraordinary lengths to maintain a presence in her daughter’s life. Yet, the science fiction means she employs, embarking on faster-than-light space voyages, so she could periodically revisit her daughter as she grew-up and had a family of her own, thanks to Relativity, maybe alienates them more than it brings them together. Perhaps, this might also be the case for Madison Kim, when her ailing father agrees to upload his brain to preserve his consciousness. Unfortunately, the Logorhythms Corporation is not a trustworthy steward of his uploaded intelligence in Craig Silverstein’s animated drama Pantheon, based on several Ken Liu short stories, which premieres today on AMC+.

Kim has had a rough time of it since her father David died, in a physical sense. His pal from Logorythyms convinced him to undergo the upload procedure, but Kim and her mother Ellen were told the process failed. Several months later, Kim starts getting emoji messages from someone who has personal family information. The angel-hacker also helps turn the cyber tables on the mean girls bullying her.

Convinced her father’s cyber-consciousness has been secretly imprisoned and exploited by Logorhythm, Kim reaches out to Caspian, an anonymous high school hacker and conspiracy monger with a keen interest in the company. However, unbeknownst to Caspian, Logorythym also has a sinister interest in him. In fact, he is part of a mysterious long-term project launched by Stephen Holstrom, the company’s late Steve Jobs-like founder.

Separately, none of the elements of Pantheon are entirely original, but the way Silverstein entwines and enmeshes them creates an extremely grabby story. The series delivers a fire-hose blast of paranoia, which maybe isn’t so unhealthy these days. We have seen plenty of online avatars before, but the way the show envisions the world of an uploaded intelligence is quite provocative and alarming. There are also subplots involving Indian programmers and tech tycoons that are extraordinarily dark and cautionary.

Paper Girls, on Prime

Remember how great the future looked in 1988? The music and movies were consistently fun and George H.W. Bush was poised to be elected president in a veritable landslide. So, how did the 2010s and 2020s turn out so badly? Maybe four newspaper deliverers will find out. They are about to be swept into a time-war in Stephany Folsom’s 8-episode Paper Girls, based on Brian K. Vaughan’s comics, which premieres today on Prime Video.

It is the morning after Halloween (but not for long), when many of the drunken teenaged troublemakers are still roaming the streets. Erin Tieng picked a heck of a first day to start her paper route. Tiffany Quilkin, a savvier paper girl helps show her the ropes. Soon, they meet up with tough-talking Mac Coyle and preppy-ish KJ Brandman, forming a temporary alliance to finish their deliveries together. However, the drunken bullies are not the only ones prowling around their suburban Cleveland neighborhood.

Fatefully, the four girls are caught up in a skirmish between future time-traveling revolutionaries, the STF (Standard Time Fighters), who want to prevent all the bad things from happening, and the “Old Watch,” the reactionaries fighting to protect their privileged positions (and maybe the integrity of the whole space-time continuum dealio). Disoriented after traveling through a worm-hole, the girls decide to hide out at Tieng’s home. They find she is still living there, but she did not turn out how the twelve-year-old would have hoped. As they navigate the future, other girls learn revelations about themselves from family members and in some cases, their future selves.

Folsom’s adaptation of Vaughan’s comics features some pretty intriguing time-travel twists. It is somewhat unusual to hear the old arguments against altering history so casually dismissed, but let’s be honest. The truth is the real, old-school Doctor Who would probably agree with the Old Watch. Nevertheless, the 1980s nostalgia always works and despite some themes of sexuality (brought on by observations of the girls future’s selves), Paper Girls is not annoyingly woke. In fact, the way Ronald Reagan acts as a sort of spirit guide for Tieng is kind of clever.

The battery of four directors (all veterans of episodic drama) keep action rolling along at a brisk pace. The generally shorter episode length (mostly around forty minutes) makes Paper Girls highly bingeable. However, it might be a mistake to end the first season without a greater sense of resolution. After all, it could suffer the same fate as Prime’s cancelled Night Sky (which is also a pretty good show, but we’ll never know its ultimate secrets).

Moonhaven, on AMC+

In Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, there was nothing utopian about the Moon colonists. They were good capitalists, who were tired of the Earthers freeloading off them. In contrast, this lunar colony believes it is a utopia, whose entire purpose is to develop the technology and social mores that will save Earth from its own self-destructive impulses. Yet, it too develops a separatist rebellion in creator-showrunner Peter Ocko’s six-episode Moonhaven, which premieres Thursday on AMC+.

Things are bad on Earth, really, really bad. However, Moonhaven’s small terraformed patch of the Moon is a lunar paradise. At least, that is what they smugly assure themselves. It is all due to IO, the artificial intelligence that governs the planet and prevents bad behavior. When something slightly unseemly occurs, “detectives” Paul Serno and Arlo Noon are dispatch to investigate, but since that mainly involves dialing up an IO playback, they mostly function more like grief counselors.

Cynical war veteran Bella Sway does not care about any of that. She periodically pilots a shuttle to and from Moonhaven, because she enjoys the isolation of space flight. She also takes advantage of the opportunity to smuggle advanced Moonhaven drugs back to Earth. However, this time she will be ferrying Indira Mare, Moonhaven’s envoy to Earth, who is due to play a critical role in the soon-to-commence deployment of Moonhaven youth back to Earth.

Basically, they are supposed to be like secret Peace Corps volunteers, theoretically reintegrating with Terran society to steer the planet in the right direction. Unfortunately, there are some Moonies who want to stop the process due to their fear, pride, and contempt. There are also those on Earth out to halt the reverse-colonization, because nobody likes a know-it-all.

Sway will never be a true believer, but she eventually throws in her chips with Serno and Noon, because of the friendships she develops with them. In fact, the way Ocko writes the character of Sway and the way Emma McDonald portrays her, reflect the military mindset with great intelligence and empathy. Weirdly, McDonald’s Sway also shares some entertaining banter with the envoy’s bodyguard, Tomm Shultz (played by Joe Manganiello) in the first episode, but his true nature turns out to be very different in subsequent installments.

Conversely, Dominic Monaghan and Kadeem Hardison are initially aggressively annoying as the Kumbaya-ish Serno and Noon, but their buddy chemistry deepens quite effectively over the course of the series. Amara Karen and Ayelet Zurer also nicely stoke the intrigue, as Mare and Maite Voss, the colony’s spiritual leader.

Shudder: Blood Machines

Who knew the Singularity would strike such a blow against the so-called “patriarchy?” Yet, you would think humanity would be better off in the long-run if we were not beholden to artificial intelligence and the machines they control. A couple of old school scavenger dudes still think are on top of the intelligence pyramid, but they will learn differently in Seth Ickerman (a.k.a. Raphael Hernandez & Savitri Joly-Gonfard)’s Blood Machines, “a Shudder original experience in three chapters,” which premieres today on the streaming service.

Vascan and his older, more human co-pilot Lago have been chasing a rogue ship to salvage for parts, but Mima, its damaged AI unit, has been frustratingly elusive. Just when Vascan thinks he has it cornered, a shamanistic tribe of women who commune with artificial intelligences helps her escape as a naked ghost. Despite Lago’s reservations and the buggy behavior of their own AI system, Vascan refuses to back down. He even takes Corey, the mysterious tribal leader as his prisoner. He might even have more contemptible motives, which further stokes Lago’s mounting unease.

Or something like that. Blood Machines is definitely a case of style and visuals prioritized far above narrative and characterization. It makes sense that the project started off as a proof-of-concept music video for Carpenter Brut’s “Turbo Killer” and it still has that kind of razzle-dazzle look and fire-and-fury vibe. If you love the old school Heavy Metal film and magazine, Blood Machines will probably appeal to your sensibilities.

Frankly, the inverted cross motif is more than a little baffling. Obviously, it brings to mind all sorts of satanic horror tropes, but some cult film fans might also get Evangelion flashbacks. Regardless, the way Ickerman freely intermixes it with naked female bodies gets a bit creepy.

Tales from the Loop: Science Fiction Gets Moody and Thoughtful, on Prime Video

This little Middle American community is a company town, but that plant where everyone works is an underground laboratory for cutting edge physics experiments known as “The Loop.” At its core is a huge Macguffin called “The Eclipse.” Think of it as three parts super-collider and one-part Obelisk from 2001. The Eclipse seems to make strange things happen for those whose lives revolve around—or maybe they just happen on their own in writer-creator Nathaniel Halpern’s sort-of science fiction sort-of anthology series, Tales from the Loop, which premieres Thursday on Prime Video.

Perhaps it is fitting Amazon supplied the press with non-sequential episodes, considering Tales addresses subjects like time-loops and alternate realities. Episodes 101: “Loop” and Episode 104: “Echo Sphere” pair up well together, because they closely follow the domestic dramas of the Willard, whereas Episode 106: “Parallel” could very well be the best of the series. Think of it as Somewhere in Time with more overt science fiction elements.

In contrast, the fantastical is decidedly dialed down in “Echo” and possibly intended as a matter for interpretation in “Loop,” despite the depressed looking robot constantly trudging across the background. The series starts with a suitably cryptic introduction from Russ Willard, the founder and director of the Loop. We then meet a little girl whose emotional disturbed mother works as a researcher at the Loop. She befriends Willard’s grandson, Cole, after her mother and all traces of the woman’s existence disappear after conducting an off-the-books experiment using a stolen fragment of the Eclipse. However, the well-meaning Cole has a hard time finding an adult who will bother to listen to them.

“Echo” is definitely the least genre of the episodes up for review, but it is definitely a showcase for Jonathan Pryce, portraying Russ Willard. It still features the same eerie retro-futuristic, post-industrial, alternate 1980s landscapes that distinguished Simon Stalenhag’s original conceptual art books, particularly the rusted out Echo Sphere itself. Supposedly, the number of times your voice echoes inside foretells the length of your life, so if it doesn’t echo at all, you can guess what that means.

Instead of the Willards, “Parallel” focuses Gaddis, the lonely and lonely-hearted security guard posted in a small booth outside the entrance to the Loop. He happens to find a tractor abandoned in the field behind the bungalow where he lives, which is interesting to us, because it appears to levitate like the landspeeders in Star Wars. However, it is interesting to Gaddis because he finds a picture of a man inside that becomes the focus of his romantic fantasies, much like Dana Andrews in Laura. When he finally fixes the tractor and fires it up, it returns through the wormhole it came through, where he finds his alternate, more sociable self is engaged in a relationship with the man in the picture.

NYTVF ’12: Control

When we think of space, we think of lofty ideals, passed on down to us from JFK and Star Trek.  However, an oppressive belligerent power will act the same up there as they do down here.  Indeed, China’s saber-rattling off the coast of Taiwan will bedevil an American manned space mission in Josh Bernard & Bracey Smith’s Control (trailer here), which screens as part of the 2012 New York Television Festival’s Independent Pilot Competition (IPC).

The NYTVF is the only meaningful festival of its kind showcasing independent talent looking to break into episodic television, in the same way scores of film festivals act as launching pads for indie films in search of theatrical distribution.  There are real development deals to be won at this year’s festival.  The dollar figures may not be much by studio standards, but they would constitute a significant step up compared to the budgets of many competing pilots.  In the drama category, Smith & Bernard’s Control may well be the pilot to beat, which is not all surprising, considering their Pioneer One won the drama competition two years ago.

The American and Chinese navies are engaged in a war of nerves in the South China Sea.  Simultaneously, an American spacecraft is racing to beat their Chinese rivals to a resource rich asteroid.  Long in development, the American mission continued, even when China precipitously laid claim to the asteroid, in open defiance of international law.  Apparently a quasi-private enterprise conducted with official government sanction, the mission obviously just became a whole lot more complicated. 

The flight director isn’t helping much either.  Not only did he call the president a feckless ditherer on national television (but in more colorful terms), he is also carrying on a not so secret affair with the chief medical officer, who happens to be married to the flight captain.

Of all the genre-related pilots screening in the Drama 1 programming block, Control is by far the one that leaves audiences most eager to see more.  Shrewdly, Bernard & Smith end on a monster cliffhanger that cannot possibly be as bad as it seems.  Though the flight director resents the U.S. Military’s secret involvement in the mission, he might be happy to have them around when it is all said and done.  Based on the pilot, Control has the potential to become a cool submarine-warfare in space story, much like the classic Romulan episodes on the original Trek.

The tone of Control is sort of like a cross between Apollo 13 and Ben Bova’s geopolitical sci-fi thriller novels.  To their credit, Smith & Bernard do not appear to have many naïve notions with respects to the current (and presumably near future) Chinese Communist regime.  It also looks reasonably realistic, thanks to the control room full of computers bought on the cheap due to a tech firm’s bankruptcy (finally, the stimulus plan delivers). 

Perhaps most importantly, despite all the intrigue and political infighting, it looks like it will still tap into the warm fuzzy feelings many viewers get when they think about the Space Program, particularly in its Apollo-era heyday.   Showing loads of potential, Control is definitely worth seeing when it screens again this Friday (10/26) as part of the 2012 NYTVF’s IPC Drama 1 program at the Tribeca Cinemas.

Primeval Season 5: All the Dinosaurs with More Apocalyptic Doom

Terra Nova was not the first series to put dinosaurs on the small screen in a big way. Primeval, created by Adrian Hodges & Tim Haines, got there first and has fended off extinction quite scrappily, which might be more than the Spielberg backed show can claim. Quickly resurrected after an announced cancellation two seasons ago, Primeval swaggers back for a fifth series tomorrow night on BBC America’s Supernatural Saturday (promo here).

For those coming in cold, if you just think X-Files with dinosaurs, you can roll with season five just fine. In response to the inconvenient phenomenon of dinosaurs barging into our world through rifts in time, dubbed anomalies, the ARC (Anomaly Research Centre) was formed. Presumably most of them are coming from the past, but some of the marauding creatures might be from the future. It gets tricky. The ARC dispenses field teams to fight the monsters, seal the anomalies, and keep a lid on the situation, like good Men in Black. However, with the arrival of private philanthropist Philip Burton’s research team, the ARC becomes factionalized, with techie Conor Temple torn between camps.

Almost immediately, the new six-episode season goes T2, with the revelation field team leader Matt Anderson is actually from the future, sent back to save the world from Burton’s research project, apocalyptically code-named “New Dawn.” Evidently, you do not have to show anymore documentation to get a job at the top secret ARC than to vote in New York State, but so be it.

More importantly, there are a lot of dinosaurs in season five. They even figure out a way to get an eustreptospondylus on-board a submarine in the second episode. In fact, they are so busy fighting the sea monsters outside, they even forget they have it in suspended animation, which could be a problem. However, as satisfying as their dino-rampages might be to genre fans, season five’s best effects involve the massive swarm of beetles infesting the ARC in episode four. They put Irwin Allen films to shame.

As Anderson, Ciarán McMenamin is an engaging protagonist, far more Kirk than Picard. His character is also fallible enough to screw-up pretty badly at times, in understandably humanizing ways. Hannah Spearritt’s Abby Maitland is also a pretty solid action figure, but her soap opera relationship with Temple gets a bit tiresome, as does the whiny researcher, played by the baby-faced Andrew-Lee Potts. However, Ben Miller provides some fine pompous British color as Home Office representative James Lester. He might be a bit of a snob, but he really earns his stripes in the fifth season (if he hadn’t already), in some of the season’s best moments down the stretch.

Well written by Hodges and Haines, Primeval is sci-fi television with both egghead and meathead appeal. It is also relatively restrained expressing its cautionary themes of Promethean hubris, arguing rather narrowly that it is probably a bad idea to deliberately create man-made holes in the space-time continuum, which seems quite reasonable on the face of it. Good clean dinosaur fun, Primeval’s fifth season is perfectly accessible to viewers starting fresh when it premieres tomorrow night (11/12) on BBC America.

(Photos © Impossible Pictures Ltd.)

Brit SF: Outcasts

Life on Earth has become untenable. It is not so much environmental conditions, per se, but man’s own inhumanity towards man that is destroying the planet. With drug cartels taking over Europe and Chinese militarism running unchecked, war is the only terrestrial constant. As a result, many have evacuated in giant space arks. Those lucky enough will find refuge on the planet Carpathia (named for the ship that stopped to rescue Titanic survivors). However, the colonists of Forthaven will find their new home is not exactly an Eden in Outcasts (promo here), a new eight-episode science fiction series premiering on BBC America this Saturday.

Though still a relatively young community, Forthaven already has a tragic history. During their early years, a mystery disease called C-23 nearly wiped out all their children. The steps President Richard Tate took to deal with the disease will haunt the geneticist turned political leader in future episodes. With post-C-23 birthrates perilously low, the arrival of a new ship from Earth is understandably big news. Forthaven needs to replenish its future generation. Bringing down the transport safely is Tate’s highest priority, but a domestic incident will have macro implication for the colony.

Viewers quickly learn Carpathia’s dirty laundry. Tate had initiated and then canceled an ambitious genetic engineering program to create cloned humans, or “Advanced Cultivars” (AC’s). Presumed dead, those AC’s now live a nomadic existence outside Forthaven, which they most definitely hold a grudge against.

After a strong start, episodes three and four get somewhat bogged down with the dour ethical implications of the AC program. Fortunately, Outcasts rebounds thereafter (no sense crying over spliced genes), as the nefarious Julius Berger, a prominent survivor of the transport ship, plots a coup d’état against Tate. Series creator Ben Richards establishes a suitable environment for intrigue, with the PAS officers (the cops in charge of internal security) remaining loyal to Tate, while the XP’s (the military Expenditionaries) are inclined to side with Berger. As if Tate did not have enough to worry about, he also learns in dramatic fashion there is a reason the Carpathia’s indigenous hominid life forms died out eons ago. As they say in science fiction, they are not alone.

Richard Tate is a great sci-fi character and the key reason why Outsiders works so well. Initially, he appears to be a commanding humanitarian in the Jean-Luc Picard vein. Yet, Tate is a darker, more complicated figure. Profoundly touched by tragedy, he is still able to make hard decisions and sleep relatively well at night. Character actor Liam Cunningham has the perfect hard-nosed gravitas for the part, as well as the sonorous voice that plays so prominent a role in episode one.

In a bit of a misfire, Hermoine Norris plays PAS chief Stella Isen, Tate’s closest ally, with frosty reserve, much like her character Carol Jordan in Wire in the Blood. That worked much better playing off the manic squirreliness of Dr. Tony Hill than the steely resolve of Tate. Conversely, Amy Manson and Daniel Mays are rather engaging as Fleur Morgan and Cass Cromwell, respectively, our primary POV PAS agents, who harbor a Tracey & Hepburn attraction to each other, but are also burdened with secret pasts.

Though the effects of Outcasts are imminently presentable, the series is more concerned with social speculation and character development. Sadly, it appears that the first eight episodes are all we are getting, at least for the time being. While the conclusion offers a measure of satisfaction, it provides little closure, leaving Forthaven poised on the brink of a multi-front war for survival. Indeed, one could easily envision the story continuing in a hard-driving action film. It is worth hoping for. Indeed, Outcasts is one of the better conceived and executed science fiction series featuring a genuinely compelling lead protagonist. It is recommended for all sf fans and Anglophiles when it debuts this Saturday (6/18) on BBC America.

NYTVF ’10: Pioneer One

Moving from the web to theater screenings and then ultimately to television might sound like a counter-intuitive path for a property to travel, but that is exactly the trick several webisode productions are trying to pull off by entering the pilot competition at the 2010 New York Television Festival. Although one might expect a good science fiction pilot to be almost prohibitively expensive to produce, one of this year’s best entries is in fact a genre production. Indeed, writer Josh Bernhard and director Bracey Smith’s pilot Pioneer One (trailer here) is definitely worth seeing tomorrow as part of Drama program number one.

A Homeland Security agent assigned to Montana, Tom Taylor does not see a lot of action. Unfortunately, that suddenly changes when a rash of radiation sickness strikes a series of northern border towns, causing his superiors to suspect a dirty bomb. However, when the source is traced to a vintage Soviet space capsule carrying a desperately malnourished Russian passenger, the mystery takes on deeper, perhaps cosmic dimensions.

At about a half hour in length, Pioneer only hints at how Taylor will approach this case. However, we get a good sense of him as a character thanks to two very sharply written scenes. In one, we happily learn Taylor is not a by-the-book kind of agent, while his subordinate Sophie Larson will probably be the Scully to his Mulder.

We also meet Taylor’s apparently retired mentor, “Norton,” whom he calls for some perspective on the Soviet mindset during the Cold War. His response: “I’d never put anything past them.” Instead of the typical moral equivalency, the obviously crafty old spook asserts (at least for now): “we were crazy too, but they were crazier—I really mean that.” He certainly seems to, thanks to a very cool turn by Laurence Cantor as the agency veteran.

Frankly, webisodes do have a reputation for sterling performances and if Pioneer makes it to the promised land, it will probably have to be recast with several name actors attached. However, the DHS cast is surprisingly strong (a few scientists though, not so much). James Rich does the haggard ex-hotshot agent thing quite well, while Alexandra Blatt counterbalances him rather effectively as the coolly efficient Larson.

Ultimately, Pioneer has to be considered a successful pilot, because it certainly leaves viewers intrigued. While the creative team has been assiduously raising funds for future installments, a strong showing at NYTVF would definitely help. Development deals really have come out of NYTVF (now in its sixth year), so who knows? For now, Pioneer is well worth checking out online or as part of NYTVF’s Drama program number one, which screens at the Tribeca Cinemas tomorrow (9/21) and Thursday (9/23).